


Sass Verse: the comment fics

by Cards_Slash



Series: Sass Verse [11]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Comment Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-24
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2018-10-09 21:18:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 31,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10421973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: a round up of all the comment fics written in the Sass Badger vs The Son of No One universe





	1. Edward/Federico, R, "Making Pasta"

Edward/Federico | R | Sexual Content.  Mention of Character Death.  Also gratuitous Godfather 3 references.

“Why are you looking at me like that,” Federico asked.  The pretense of pasta was spread out across the counter, dusty and half-finished.  Edward was pink-cheeked and loose-limbed, sitting on a stool with his knees sprawled open and a half-empty beer bottle resting in the space between this thighs.  His hair was falling out of the pony tail he’d put it up in while he contemplated the whole kitchen around them.  “What?” Federico asked.

“You ever see that movie,” Edward started.

Federico could have fisted a whole handful of half-finished noodles to throw at him before he even got to the second half of his question.

“Godfather?  Uh–three, I think?”  Edward leaned forward so he slid off the stool and the beer bottle, long since finished sweating condensation in the warmth of the room, clattered as he dropped it into the sink behind him.  “You know with Andy Garcia?”

“Who isn’t Italian,” Federico said.  He didn’t consciously turn toward Edward but his body seemed to think it was a good choice nonetheless.  It was a traitorous thing.

“He isn’t?”

“No, he’s Cuban.”

Edward made a noise deep in his throat like he cared and then spread his hand across the top of the island where the pasta was spread out to dry.  “So he’s not Italian, he’s still got something in common with you,” Edward said.

Federico tipped his head because Edward was close enough to smell.  The dusty flour was all over their clothes, caught under their fingernails and in the dry parts of their hands.  Somewhere, across the room, there was boiling water that made the room smell like half his childhood memories of home, but Edward was dragging him forward by a belt loop, saying, 

“Yeah, he fucked his cousin too.”

Federico smiled because it was stupid.  “Not much in common with me then,” he said.  “I must be playing Sofia’s part.”  And Edward kissed him because they’d argued themselves to the edge of tolerance about the application of verbs.  There was no breaking Federico of his father’s prejudice and no convince Edward to give up trying to talk him out of it.  

Oh but there were hands pulling at his belt and his pants.  There was a dirty-old-thrill in Edward’s hands pushing into his pants, his fingers spreading across the tail of his shirt safely tucked into place.  The coolness of his palms a almost uncomfortable difference from the warmth of his ass.  He was pushed back against the counter, easy to kiss and welcoming to every little exploration of Edward’s fingers.  

They’d gotten slow with age, lost that intensity of youth that left them with stupid-boys’ bruises.  They had all the time in the world, a complete lack of witnesses (every single person out of the house–shopping and visiting and sight-seeing), and it was a sweet delight in the care Edward used when he touched him.  

They were three seconds from adjourning to a horizontal surface, but Federico tipped his head back and said, “wrong pasta,” like it _mattered_.

“What?” Edward asked into the curve of his neck.  One of his hands had worked around to the front, slowly getting his dick free, undeterred by the sudden change in subject.

“The movie,” Federico clarified, “it was gnocchi.  They were making gnocchi.”  It didn’t matter at all and Edward looked like he was about to dismiss the smell diversion from movie canon.  “If you want to play this scene right, you have to fuck Ezio.  He makes better gnocchi.”

Edward rolled his eyes.  “If I wanted to play this scene right, I’d probably have to fuck Claudia.  I’m not sure she can make gnocchi but she’s a woman and that’s much closer to the original movie.”

“Ass,” Federico said.  Edward kissed him without a hint of apology.  “I don’t think I can fuck you now,” he said.  “After that.”

“But fucking Ezio doesn’t bother you,” Edward mumbled into the kiss.  “That’s sexist.”  He pulled his hands free and slid his fingers through Federico’s.  They were holding hands like real lovers, making out by a spread of pasta and it was so _easy_  and so _simple_  it felt wrong.  It must have bled into the kiss because Edward was leaning back with his mouth in a sideways-frown, looking at him like he was _disappointed_.  “We talked about this,” he said.

“You did,” Federico countered.

“Your wife invited me.”

Federico sighed.  “I know.”

“Your wife invited me to have sex with you.  She mentioned that in the phone call.  She said,” and Federico was rolling his eyes as he leaned his elbows back against the counter.  Edward’s hands were around his hips, pulling him so they were pressed together.  “Come to Italy, Federico needs the company.”

“Not the sex,” Federico countered, “you were the one that said we should stop having sex.”

“Well, it’s either we have sex or we talk about how your father died and you never got to tell him all the things you were afraid to tell him your whole life.”  With options like that, it was hard to imagine how they wouldn’t end up having sex.  

“We could just make pasta,” Federico said.  He stood up straight and dusted at the flour on his elbows.  The space between them was tight and unresolved, the emptiness of the house was undeniably purposeful.  It would have been so very easy to kiss Edward again.  It would have been so desperately welcome to provoke him into fucking.  It would have made _sense;_ it would have been a relief from the slow-reassuring-comfort of his entire family watching him with wide-eyes, bumping awkwardly along toward trying to heal him.  Federico had been the oldest-and-the ugliest-and-the _meanest_  since the day he was born but Ezio and Claudia were watching him with the same soft worry that Cristina did, waiting for him to break into pieces all because the man who contributed DNA and his last name died without a good-bye.  He looked at Edward staring at him with unfailing expectation.  Federico sighed, “fine, you can suck my dick if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Because in the past twenty years, I’ve sucked your dick altruistically so many times,” Edward answered.  He tightened his hand around Federico’s wrist, “come on.  I’m an old man, if I’m suck your dick we’re finding a bed.”

“If we find a bed, we’ll end up fucking.”

“Then maybe we’ll nap.”  Edward dragged him out of the kitchen, stopping only long enough to turn the stove off before they slid up the back staircase to the second level.  For a man who had only been to the house once in his whole life, his sense of direction was flawless as the dragged them to the nearest bed.  

They did end up fucking, with the curtains pulled open and the merciless sunlight highlight their every flaw.  When they were done, Edward was laying on his belly with the sex-flush fading off his neck and Federico was contemplating smoking and how likely he would be to get in an argument about smoking in the family’s ancestral home (around all these fine furnishings), he said, “you know, the girl gets killed in the end of that movie.”

Edward groaned into the pillow.  “We’ve established we don’t fit the scenario.  I’m not Cuban, you’re not a woman.  There was no gnocchi.”  His hand was broad across Federico’s face, pulling it toward him to kiss him.  “We are going to talk about your Father before I leave.”

“So the sex was just to soften me up?” 

“The sex was because you rolled your sleeves up and spoke in Italian for half an hour and I have no control over my libido when you’re around.”  He kissed him again.  “Also, your wife said I could.”  And one more aimless kiss.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> always accepting prompts at the tumblr blog ([tellcardtowrite.tumblr.com](http://tellcardtowrite.tumblr.com))


	2. Jaida and her Fathers; Pg?, Jaida finds the blog

“Dad!” was a sudden interruption of a lazy afternoon. Malik was half-way to sleeping in his desk chair with his fingers poised over the keyboard while he tried to slog through yet another stupid essay submitted to him from the blank-minded morons that took his class. (And the whole time he was falling asleep to the resounding echos of stupidity ringing from the essay before him, he thought he could hear Kadar laughing the way he’d laughed when Malik said he was going to try to be a teacher.) Jaida stomped into his office clutching her tablet in one hand and her face in a grim frown.

“What?” he asked. 

“So you remember,” had never (in his memory) ended with anything positive, “that time I asked Dad about how you met and he said something about how you met at a prom?”

No he didn’t. “Yes?” Malik said.

“And you remember how he made it seem like you met and fell in love and everything was great except that you wouldn’t let me date Thomas Sanderbridge when I was eight because he was too old for me but he was apparently allowed to show up and date you when you were still in high school?”

No. “I don’t know that he said it was okay.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” was the wisdom of a sixteen year old on the constant verge of suing for emancipation and buying a yacht in the Caribbean. At which point she lifted up the tablet in her hand like she’d found the final definitive proof that her parents were the terrible people. (Making her take a language in high school and snowballed into a constant battle of wills. Altair’s response to Jaida throwing a fit over high school French was to refuse to speak to her in any language but French.) 

“I don’t know what–”

“True to form,” Jaida all but screamed at him, “Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad, not even a full fourteen hours after attending a prom at Castle-Mount High School, manages to spread ill-inform…” Her voice trailed off when he sat back in his seat and let out a sigh. “Oh?” she snapped at him. “So you didn’t think that at some point any of your children would accidentally run into this information on the internet?”

Malik tried to imagine what the correct response to that statement was. (The way he often found himself trying to figure out what the correct response to Jaida’s bizarre cross between his analysis and her father’s anger should be.) “How much of it have you read?” he asked.

“Like three months of you bashing everything about Dad,” she said. “I don’t see the happily ever after–and you were like seventeen,” hissed out like a swear word. “What did Grandma even do? What were you even thinking? Is this why I can’t date a senior?”

“Do you think we’re happy now?” he asked.

Jaida’s anger didn’t deflate but shift, her hand motioned sideways dismissively, “yes. I mean, I don’t think he’s super thrilled you’re suddenly a professor but he’s a spoiled brat so who cares.”

“Jaida,” was calm and he motioned to the seat at the side of his desk. She came and dropped into as heavy as a stone, slapped her tablet against her lap and stared at him with the very bitterest of defiance. “The truth is, I hated him. I hated everything about your father. He was an unhappy, awful person that went to a prom full of teenagers he didn’t belong around, got drunk, had sex with me and left me alone in a hotel room the next morning.”

“But why can’t I date?” Jaida demanded.

“Because you’re flunking French on purpose.”

She scowled at her knees, like they were solely to blame for that. “Look, I already know more languages than half the kids that go to that school. I can speak Italian and Arabic and English and I don’t understand why I have to take French.”

“Because it’s a requirement to graduate. You’re not taking a stand against your oppressive parents by failing French, you’re being pointlessly stubborn against the inevitable. You can’t date as long as you persist, the fact that the boy is a senior doesn’t matter. Until he graduates, then it matters.”

Jaida slapped her tablet on his desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, Dad doesn’t have to be so–” a hundred different slurs crossed her mind before she ended with, “Dad about it.” The silence dragged. “So what even happened at your prom to make you hate Dad so much?”

“We got drunk, had sex and he left alone in a hotel room the next day so he could go home and tweet about how he wasn’t gay.” He leaned back into his seat as the screen of his computer went dim. 

Jaida was biting her lower lip and looking sideways, working through her reluctance to admit she may have been wrong about something. “Well, I mean. That would make anyone hate a guy.” She shifted so she was looking at him. “So, how’d you get over something like that?”

Malik smiled. “A lot of work.”

“Like what?” Jaida prompted. 

And he told her, all the details he could remember–as much as he thought was appropriate to share–and she sat and listened with horror and amusement until he was done.

–

Altair hadn’t even made it down the hall toward the kitchen, still wearing his businessman’s suit, when Jaida stopped in in place with her tablet held out in front of her. The Sett hadn’t fared well in the intervening years of the internet, it’s colors were faded and the coding left it looking dated like a black and white movie, but it was recognizable never the less. His eyes skimmed across the words at the top, settled on ‘prom’ and he groaned. “Can I get food first?”

“So Father told me that you were a bigoted piece of trash hiding behind your fame and your money. He said that you were twenty years old at prom and he was only seventeen.”

This conversation was going to end nowhere good.

“I didn’t know he was seventeen.”

“I don’t think that matters,” Jaida said. She dropped the tablet away from his face and put her hands on her hip. Time should have made her look less like her grandmother but every birthday that passed made her more-and-more like a Lamah clone, every aspect of her face a near-perfect replication. And while he knew very well what Lamah looked like when she thought he was an ass, it was a strange reminder of years past to see that look on his daughter’s face. 

“I think it should matter a little.”

“I think you should trust me,” she said. Her arms folded across her chest. “I mean, if you can be as unbelievably terrible as you were and still end up with a great life, I don’t understand why I can’t be allowed to make choices that might be viewed as ludicrous mistakes by my children.”

And then it made sense. “You want to date that stupid kid,” he said. 

“He has a name!”

“He’s eighteen!” Altair shouted back. 

“You had sex with eight hundred people,” Jaida said. Then her eyebrow lifted up and she waited for his retort. Her jaw was set grimly in place while he cycled through a series of emotions (respect for her investigative skills, anger at the intrusion on his past, disbelief that this conversation existed, horror at the thought of some asshole like him getting near his daughter) before he put his hands up in the air as surrender.

“You’re failing French,” he said.

“Yes and Father would keep me from dating because of it, but you don’t want me dating him because he’s a boy like you were, and he only has one thing on his mind just like you did.” She cocked her hip out and put her hand on it, “so are you locking Tazim, Darim and Sef up in the basement when they’re sixteen? They’re boys, they only have one thing on their mind.”

Altair sighed. “I don’t like the boy.”

“Grandma hated you,” she countered. “But she had actual proof.”

“I don’t want someone doing to you what I did to your Father,” he said.

“Well they can’t,” she said, “because I don’t have an eating disorder, I’m not confused by my sexuality and I’m pretty sure if some guy that’s too old to be at prom gets drunk with me that Vincenzio or Haytham would murder them before I got around to making a blog about it.” She huffed as she said it like the potential murder of her suitors was an inconvenience. “Not to mention,” she added far too quickly to interrupt, “I have never kept secrets from you! I’m not an orphan with unlimited money and no responsibility! I’m in the top five percent of my class! I volunteer, I have a job and a savings account. I’m well-adjusted because I have overly-concerned parents who made sure I had a well-rounded childhood. And the one time that I really needed you, I came to you and I told you that those kids at school were making fun of me all the time because i had a lesbian mother and gay dads and you were there for me. And I just don’t understand why you don’t think that if some stupid boy did to me what you did to Father, I wouldn’t come to you.”

“Because its different when its a boy,” Altair said. Then he sighed, “I do trust you. I don’t trust him. I don’t want you anywhere near boys like that.”

“I deserve to make that choice,” she said. “Grandma let Father make that choice. That worked out for everyone as far as I’m concerned.”

There was no arguing with that logic. Altair sighed again, “Malik still won’t let you date while you’re failing French.” But more importantly, “Just be smart, Jaida. Make the right choices for the right reasons. This all,” he motioned at the whole house and the space between them and the tablet, “turned out well but it shouldn’t have. It should have been a disaster.”

Jaida rolled her eyes, “I spent three hours reading Father denounce and mock and belittle every aspect of you as a person, I’m pretty sure that it was a disaster.” But her face softened, “but I’ll remember everything you taught me. So trust me?”

“Fine,” he said. “As soon as you stop failing French.”

“Good, so I’ll have Mr. Gillis send you a letter home tomorrow saying I turned in all my missing assignments and then I can go on a date this weekend, right?” She was glowing with pride.

Altair laughed because there was simply no better reaction to her conniving. He shook his head the whole time she beamed in pride. “Oh–” was drawn out in a long breath, “no,” stopped short, “as soon as your Father finds out you were failing on purpose because it was a tactic to get you permission to date some stupid senior boy you’ll be lucky to be allowed out of the house to attend school much less go on a date.” He slung his arm around her shoulders as she frowned. 

“Ok, but in two weeks?” she asked.

“Sure, we’ll be optimistic. Maybe one of the boys will do something to make you look good.”

“Oh!” Jaida said suddenly, “Peyton started smoking at school but she hasn’t told Uncle Desmond or Aunt Lucy yet. Maybe he finds out about that and is thankful his child is too smart to try something so stupid and dangerous.”

Altair snorted, “you are exactly like your father. _Exactly_.” He dragged her with him down the hall and toward the kitchen for dinner.


	3. Ensemble Cast, PG-13, "Jaida asks how her fathers met"

They were mid-way through a warm laugh, swapping stories across a spread of a mostly forgotten poker game, when Jaida (pink in the cheeks with messy twin braids) said, “well, how did you meet?”

Kadar choked on the water he was trying to drink in time with Claudia’s curving grin. The two of them had wandered off on a tangent of how they’d met over wedding dresses and gotten married three separate times (once secretly, once for family and once for public spectacle) on three separate dates and never settled on an anniversary. 

Desmond was smirking at his cards (like a shark, surely) but he looked up long enough to meet Altair’s eyes across the table. The silence dragged for a half-a-breath too long and soured up awkward about the time Lucy came back in the room carrying a fresh bowl of chips and a beer with the cap already popped off. 

“What, is it some kind of secret?” Jaida asked.

“No,” Altair said.

Malik looked at him like he was a liar and set his cards down so deliberately there was no denying it was a trap. His chin rested so sweetly into his palm as he stared at him like the whole rest of the table. 

The sound of the boys arguing about the end of some movie in the next room was loud enough to indicate someone would need to intervene but his daughter’s intense stare was infinitely more urgent. 

“What’d I miss?” Lucy asked once she was sitting again.

“Jaida asked how her fathers met,” Desmond said. He was quiet but delighted while Lucy grinned like a fucking Cheshire cat and then the whole table was looking at Altair like he was the sole keeper of the history of their meeting.

“We–met at a dance,” Altair said. 

“What dance?” Jaida asked.

Malik’s eyebrow lifted.

“His prom.”

Jaida wrinkled up her nose at that idea, like it was stupid to her. “But,” she said (with all of her father’s intelligence caught in that single words, his tenacity and his disbelief rolled so perfectly into one syllable), “you couldn’t even have gone to the same school.” That was an excellent observation. “And aren’t you like three years older than Dad?” another excellent observation.

“Two,” Malik corrected.

“Well,” Jaida started, “I don’t think it’s acceptable for you to have gone to prom together if he was two years older than you because when I tried to ask Thomas Sanderbridge out on a date you told me that I couldn’t go out with him because he was sixteen months older than me and the ‘age gap was too great’.”

Malik’s smirk was so sharp it could have cut a diamond in half. “You did say that,” he agreed.

Jaida was eight-whole-years-old and full of herself. 

“Actually,” Kadar said from across the table, “they didn’t go together. Malik went to his prom by himself and Altair went with some girl. They met there and they just really hit it off.”

Jaida was frowning about that, digesting the sound of it as she scrunched up her nose and wrinkled her forehead. “What girl?” she asked, “Mom?”

“Who did you go to the prom with?” Desmond asked.

“I don’t remember,” Altair said. “Anyway, I met your father there and we lived happily ever after.”

“I still think its hypocritical that you got to date him when he was in high school but I can’t date a boy in the fourth grade.” Jaida set her cards down with a sigh. “Anyway, I’m done playing this stupid game.” It was perfectly in time with Tazim running into the room shouting:

“Dad!” like a war cry, 

and the resounding sound of his brothers at his heels, full of nothing but protests of their innocence.

Malik was still smirking at him, barely able to unhinge his jaw to say, “lived happily ever after?” before the boys were all three there arguing about who did what to the other.

“I mean, until we had kids,” Altair said. He slapped his cards down on the table because the boys would have to be placated and separated before they’d stop shouting.


	4. Altair, PG, "buys some flowers"

If there was ever a time that his Grandmother would return from the grave just to present him with the full depth of his disappointment, the exact moment he stopped at the florist’s counter and said, “so I need some kind of flowers that are pretty and have no secret depressing meaning.”

The florist was wearing a green apron over her pink shirt and there were two bandages on her left hand. For a moment, her face was perfectly blank (save for the customer service smile) and then it mutated through several stages of confusion before she finally worked around to, “who are you giving them to? What kind of pretty, I mean.”

“It’s my daughter’s third birthday, she loves pink flowers but I made my husband angry so if I bring home flowers with secret meanings, he’ll just use that as further proof that I am incredibly shallow and don’t care about paying attention to details.” 

“Ok,” the florist said again. “Pink roses?”

“Do they secretly mean, ‘I don’t even care about our daughter because powers beyond my control have scheduled an important meeting on her birthday?’” (His Grandmother was rolling in her grave, at that moment. There was a full-out earthquake going on at the mansion.) 

“No?” the florist whispered (like she wasn’t sure, or she didn’t want to accidentally set him off, he wasn’t sure). “Generally they mean admiration? Love? Appreciation?”

“Do they have thorns?” Altair asked. 

“No.”

“Poisonous?”

“They are non-toxic,” the florist said. And then she stayed there with her hands splayed on the counter, just watching his face for the onset of anymore overshares or odd questions. “Did you want one? A dozen?”

Altair considered it for a second; considered Malik’s sour face and Jaida’s adorable face and the entire family that would soon be descending on his house for cake and ice cream. (A small party right now because Malik was angry and it may or may not actually have anything to do with Altair’s meeting.) “Just all of them. How many ever you’ve got in the store.”

“All of them?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “I promise you, now matter how much they cost, I can pay for them. This isn’t a prank.”

And then she narrowed her eyes at him and her tongue ran across her lips, and like she’d just been waiting a year to finally ask she said, “are you Ez–”

“Ezio’s cousin? Yes.”

And like that, all of her worry dissolved. “It will take me a few minutes to prepare the roses.”


	5. Ensemble Cast, G, "Run" (T-ball)

It seemed (to an outside spectator) that a short eternity passed between the crack of the bat hitting the fat-round ball set atop the T and next heartbeat. It was:

The memory of polished wood floors and carpeted airplanes, and moving trains and men with ties and posh accents. It was Nannys with red cheeks and practical black shoes chasing down long hallways in a hurry, trying and failing not to shout. 

And the practical, solid, quiet study of words and thoughts and ideas in practical, solid, quiet classrooms.

There was the notion that once it had been, a boat out to sail and the salt of the air blowing so hard against a little boys face it must have felt like razors cutting his cheeks.

But it had never been (not once), the creak and clutter of old metal bleachers set cock-eyed to the field, and the smell of cheap nacho cheese drizzled generously over off-brand tortilla chips. There’d never been the smell of fresh-cut weeds and mechanic-fathers with no time to scrub grease off their hands.

No, Altair’s childhood was made up of clean-and-perfect things.

But there was Jaida (perfect, sweet-faced Jaida) standing perfectly still with her bleached-white pants and her dark blue uniform shirt, looking horrified and confused as the ball flew out. There was a scramble of little boys running all at once to grab it and the call of the coaches trying to wrangle preschoolers into obedience.

Then there was Malik with his fingers looped through the filthy fence shouting, “run!” like it should have been obvious to everyone that ever lived. Jaida dropped the bat and ran for third base, but Kadar was screaming, “no run the other way!” right next to his brother. 

Jaida cut across the field while the coach yelped objections and the umpire laughed. Altair was smiling with Darim tugging at his fingers begging for something to eat from the concession stand. “She hit the ball,” he said to Malik.

“I know you’ve played sports,” Malik said back.

“She’s only four.” He looked up again and there she was, falling on her face in the space between first and second. She picked herself up with dirt and grass and blood on her chin, and kept going. 

(And he thought, his Grandmother might never, not ever, have let him do the same.)


	6. Phyllis, PG?, "Calvin was a Good Man" (no he's not)

“Phyllis,” was the boy in a full-grown man’s clothing taking up space in her doorway. He was one of the old ones, with gray hair and a thickening meat on his chest. The smell of him was an unattractive stink of entitlement and homemade arthritis cream that did an amazing effective job of turning her stomach. “It was one thing to have a party to–” he faltered there, the glaze of his eyes went out of focus as he searched around for the terms he wished to use before he finally settled on, “poke fun at Calvin. But you had your say, and I–that is we, we think it’s in poor taste to do it again.”

Phyllis set her pen down and laid her hands one across the other on the top of her ledger. The old desk was cold under her arms. It was a magnificent centerpiece to the room, one that commanded respect from any whimpering man-child that came to her mewling about mistreatment. She’d taken the measure of removing the chairs that sat opposite the desk, leaving all of them to stand like chastised boys in front of her. And they all came, one after another, complaining or cajoling or begging. They all stood there like this idiot, turning their hats in their hands with their briefcases sitting on the floor by their feet.

“Calvin was a good man,” the poor fool said. “You’ve gotten your justice and then some. This is poor taste.”

Phyllis smiled at him and like any stupid child, the man smiled back. It was a nervous habit (she’d come to realize), something that men like this did without even realizing. “These others that agree with you, what are there names?”

“Now Phyllis,” was an immediate back pedal.

“I do insist you stop calling me by my name.” She didn’t stand but sit exactly as she had been, speaking no louder than the decorous voice her Mother raised her to use. “I can assure you that I have no interest in your opinions about my husband. I do not particularly care if you support him or if you condemn him. I will do what I please with him, very much the same as he did what he pleased with me. If you feel terribly sorry for him, you might send along your daughter to keep him company. She’s a pretty age, isn’t she? Seventeen this year? He does prefer his women to be girls.” Then she picked up her pen again. 

The man floundered there, his mouth opening and then snapping shut like a fish on land gasping for air. His cheeks suffused red with fury before his voice erupted like a great belch. “How dare you! I would–”

“Oh, don’t be so modest,” Phyllis said (half to the ledger), “you’d sell your daughter and your wife and your Mother to the highest bidder if you thought it served you well. All men would.” She did not wave her hand to indicate she was finished with him, but the men who stood at her doorway came to pull him out of the room all the same.


	7. Ensemble, PG, "Maria sends Jaida a make-up kit"

Malik came home with Sofia clutching at his arm. Her glow of laughter as bright as the sun, burning all pink in her chapped cheeks. The snow they’d fallen in was still stuck to their coats and clotted in her hair but she was laughing so hard she was breathless from it. “You did that on purpose.”

“No,” she denied. Her scarf was as long as she was tall, slowly unwinding from her neck. The foyer was a delightful spot, with enough cubbies to tuck away all the little shoes and hats and coats that needed spots to be tucked. She’d been there a week already, long-since used to hanging her coat on the guest hook and tucking her boots in with the others. She stood on her tip-toes in the puddles they made shaking the snow off their clothes. “I’ll get the mop.”

Malik was six-split-seconds away from a full refusal of any such thing when Jaida’s echoing screech interrupted. She was running full-speed down the hall with a flash of pink-pink glitter as her tutu jumped up and down and the long feather boa (another birthday gift) flew in the wind behind her. 

“Daddy!” she shrieked at him. There was a tube of blunt lipstick in one of her chubby hands as she looked up at him with (bright-red-cheeks and gaudy-blue-eyelids) shining excitement. Eyeshadow and lipgloss was smeared all across her arms in zebra stripes and leopard spots. “Look!” she shouted (as if he could have kept himself from seeing, as neon bright as she was). 

Sofia was struck as dumb as he was, so there was the two of them with gaping mouths and no words, looking down at Jaida who was waiting with her arms spread. “How beautiful,” Sofia said (at last)

“Yeah,” Malik added. “Creative,” seemed dour and sarcastic. “Where’s your father?” he asked. “And the boys?”

Jaida rolled her eyes (as only three year olds could do) and reached up to grab him by the finger. The grit of the eyeshadow was caught in the glue-consistency of the lipstick squeezed tight between her hot little fingers. It clung to his skin instantly and he had to grit his teeth behind his pasted-on smile just to keep from recoiling from it. “Come on,” she told him. “Come on I’ll show you.” 

They were down the hall and through the kitchen into the all-weather room at the back. The snow was falling from the trees in the back, all dainty and pretty, and Jaida stopped short of the layer of plastic sheeting that covered the floor. There were his sons (and his husband) sitting crossed legged in a sort of circle, looking like over-painted clowns. 

The boys had their hair pulled back from their faces with the glittery pink bows Jaida had gotten for her birthday, each of them were pushing cars against their thighs while they looked indecisive and confused. But Altair was sitting in a ruined suit (clearly having failed to think the whole thing through) smiling so wide the garish-red-slash of lipstick haphazardly spread on his mouth looked like a horror movie come to life. “We’re playing beauty parlor!”

“Why?” Malik asked. The word had never (not once, not in all the years of their marriage, not in all of the years of their relationship, not once in all of his whole life) sounded as desperate as it did in that moment. He looked at his sons–his perfectly adorable sons–and they were rainbow-colors. Their fingernails were red from how they’d scratched the lipstick off and their little toes, wiggling impatiently while they sat had been painted neon colors. The fingernail polish had exploded on the plastic sheeting like a Pollack painting.

“Maria sent Jaida a beauty box,” Altair said.

“I was only gone for an hour,” Malik said. 

Jaida had let go of his hand long enough to walk across the crinkling plastic to pick up her pallet of colors but she was back at his side with a sadist’s grin and a sticky-tipped make up brush. “I was waiting for you,” she said. 

Sofia had her fingers spread across her lips as she smiled at him. “Do you have any idea how long this is going to take to get off their faces?”

Malik felt his hand being pulled toward the plastic sheeting but he couldn’t look away from Sofia even as her face went red in her effort not to laugh. “Don’t laugh at this.”

“You have to sit,” Jaida told him as she tugged at his hand. “Daddy,” was perfectly patient, the way they spoke to her when she threw tantrums, “you have to sit.”

Malik sat at the end of the half- circle, looking directly across at Altair who was blushing up with the same giggles that Sofia was trying to hide. “An hour,” he said over Jaida’s ducked head. 

“Now,” his daughter said. Her hand slapped against his cheek with full authority and she pushed his face until he was looking directly at her. Her grim frown was full of intent and determination as she wielded the gummy brush in the space between their noses. “I’m going to make you pretty,” was as good as a death threat. “But you have to sit still. Look at Sef,” she motioned over to her (perfectly innocent) brother who was looking sideways out of the corner of his eyes like he knew what he’d done. “Sef didn’t sit still.”

“I did!” Tazim shouted. “You said we could have a turn if we sat still.”

“It’s my turn,” was Sef. 

The scuffle for the remains of the make up were brief and loud, knobby knees and dirty palms on plastic sheets. Altair was coughing to keep from laughing, “There’s no part of your faces left to paint,” Altair was saying. (Not that it would stop them.)

Jaida turned her head to glare at them, and sighed. “Boys,” she said (to Malik, a male), “right, Daddy?”

“Right,” he agreed (for lack of anything better to say).


	8. Edward/Federico, PG-13, "caught making out" (by Jenny!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you read Shelter and wanted to know why Jenny knew about her Father/Federico boy do I have an answer for you!

The biggest problem wasn’t that Federico had an amazing mouth (in many ways) but that Edward had given up fighting, liquor, excessive sex and wanton cursing.  Edward had succumbed to the inevitability of sobriety and good clean living but he still couldn’t shake the unique _craving_  that could be satisfied only by licking the extra-virgin-olive-oil out of Federico’s mouth.

It was a fucking Sunday with the kids playing in a confusing mob in the backyard.  Somewhere Federico’s pretty wife was laughing with the lesbians about something or another.  The sound of their voices was close the way the breeze through the open back doors was close.  An indistinct sound, robbed of the crispness of reality by distance and walls, left to a dream-like consistency.

But it was Federico as close as fucking life, humming to himself as he licked the tomato sliver off his thumb and continued on saying something-or-another about how the secret to real pizza was–  Edward wasn’t listening to the words but watching every motion of Federico’s mouth.  It had been the sort of mouth that got caught in a scowl for so many years there were folds at the edges of it, neatly arranged around the usual pattern of his expression.  The crinkles at his eyes were rows that echoed the sprinkling of the gray that had started growing in through his hair.

Edward was too fucking old to get distracted by stupid things, but now and again (before dinner, on Sundays) he found himself brushing his thumb across the thickest patch of gray in Federico’s hair and trailing it down across the rough scratch of stubble grown in. 

The noise that Federico made was not a sigh or a scoff but a quiet mix of the two.  He smiled just before he tipped his head and leaned forward to kiss Edward.  They were terrible teenagers (the two of them, far closer to fifty than fifteen) but the rareness of touching had kept the refreshing press of Federico’s kiss uniquely desirable.  

It was easy to fall into kissing Federico; easy to forget himself with his hand pressed against the exposed skin at the base of Federico’s neck.  He could feel the heat of his body, the throb of his pulse, and the warm brush of his breath.  Federico’s hands were in his hair when the kiss shifted to a higher gear.  It wasn’t lazy-on-Sunday but a sudden acknowledgement of the want of something they infrequently allowed.  

It had gone on and on like this, denying the inevitable, promising they were through and stumbling over their own feet and better intentions.  It was hardly a surprise when he was dragged two steps to the side so Federico could press them all together.  They were greedy with arms around one another.  

“Oh my God!”

Edward shoved Federico backward on instinct (not sense) and didn’t catch the man when he tripped over his own feet on the way back.  He hit the counter opposite them hard enough to knock over the pan he’d gotten out to finish dinner and it clattered to the floor with an excess of noise.  “Jennifer,” Edward said with his hands out.

“ _Uncle_ ,” she shouted at him.  “ _Uncle?_   Really, Dad!”  And she might have had more to say about it (oh she certainly did) but a storm of smaller feet came like a herd, moving with the limited coordination they possessed.

“Whoa, whoa,” Cristina said whenever she appeared in the doorway.  Her hands were out all delicate with fingers spread and tempered voice.  “What’s happened here?”

But the little ones had arrived, like a storm of semi-filthy animals, they invaded the kitchen with hungry mouths and general complaints.

Jennifer was furious and red (the way her mother got when she was angry) but she just shook her head and spit, “nothing,” before she turned on her heels and left the way she came.

–

Federico said, “sorry,” over the top of the heads of his children (far too young to understand why everyone was anxious and upset).

Cristina said, “well it was inevitable.”

Kidd said, “I thought you weren’t together anymore.”

–

Edward found his daughter out in the yard, scowling at her phone with her arm crossed over her chest.  He did not invade her space but take up a position close enough to see her clearly and listen to her sigh.  “Come on then,” he said to her, “lets have it.”

Jennifer dropped her hand so the phone was no longer blocking her face and she was furious and bored all at once.  “Aren’t you going to tell me not to tell everyone?”  She raised one of her eyebrows.  “Aren’t you going to tell me that it’s not like I think it is?  Are you actually _even_  related to _these people_?”

Edward sighed.  He rubbed his hands together and then sighed again and said, “his Mother is my Mother’s half sister.  We have the same Grandfather.  It is what you think it is–I wish it wasn’t but it is.”  

Jennifer was pressing her phone into her leg just above the knee, looking even more bored and angry by the second until she finally rolled her eyes and looked sideways, “well why do you wish it wasn’t?”  And, “do you not like him?  I’m not an expert but it looked like you were liking it.”

“Just because I like him, doesn’t mean its right.”

“Does Cristina know?”

“Yes.”

“And she lets you just– _whatever_?”

Edward rubbed the back of his neck and sighed again.  “I guess.”

Jennifer considered that information.  She rolled it around her infinitely wise seventeen year old’s mind and then straightened up a bit in her seat.  “So I don’t care.  It’s not a surprise.  I mean it was a surprise but we all know that you’ve been having sex with Anne and Mary and Adewale for–basically as long as we’ve been a family.  I get that you’re not traditional.  But, if Cristina knows and she’s cool with it, there’s nothing wrong.”

That was a remarkably understanding view from a person who just discovered her father in a gay incestuous embrace with her uncle.  Edward was tempted to poke the holes in her logic, to point out how they had been raised as cousins and how they shouldn’t have ever ended up in this stupid situation.  He might have told her it started when they were drunk but he nodded his head.  “Well thank you.”

“Except, you know Haytham will tell literally everyone.  So if you don’t want everyone to know maybe you shouldn’t tongue our ‘uncle’ in public places.”  She put air quotes around the word.  Edward bit his tongue rather than argue that Federico was family (but not an uncle, perhaps a cousin of some sort) and then nodded his head.  “You are so lucky I’m the good kid.”  Then she got up and hovered in the space between them.  “Come on,” she said.  “I heard there was pizza for dinner.”


	9. Edward's Family, PG?,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emily is Edward's third kid who was created because orangecrates/dreamingcellardoor did not, in fact, tell me not to give him another baby when I said "stop me from giving Edward another baby". So.

Emily moved to New York just before she started first grade.  The whole family: Father, Mother (Anne) and Mama (Mary), lived in the attic suite of Uncle Desmond’s house because, as Father liked to put it:

‘Your stupid brother needs to be supervised.’

but Mother said,

‘Haytham’s going to have a baby.  Do me a favor and try not to have any babies when you’re nineteen.’

and Mama said,

‘I don’t think we’ll be here for very long; they’re just doing some paperwork.’

Emily was six in first grade, on the cusp of understanding how time worked (how quickly it went in the summer, and how slowly it went the last fifteen minutes before the bell rang).  She knew that breakfast was a haphazard affair because Mother never liked to get up on time, Mama never liked to sleep in when there was work she could be attending to.  Father was caught between the two, sleeping in and disappearing before dawn in alternating shifts.

It was bound to happen sooner or later, that she’d end up in the kitchen with Aunt Lucy and Peyton, all dressed for school with not a single parent of her own to be seen.  Uncle Desmond was tired in the morning when he worked the night before, but he made bacon because he liked bacon, and he always saved some for Emily.  

“Your Dad still sleeping?” Aunt Lucy always asked.

“Don’t know,” Emily said a month-and-a-half past ‘not very long’ had already expired.  She knew where they kept the plates, and spoons and cups and how to load the dishwasher when she was done.  “Did Uncle Desmond work last night?”

Aunt Lucy said, “no, he got kidnapped by Altair.”

“Oh,” Emily said (exactly how she’d heard this conversation go before), “does Uncle Malik know?”

Aunt Lucy always smiled at her like she was made of precious stones.  “You know,” she said, “I don’t think he does.  I’ll probably have to go help him with the babies after I drop you off at school.  You got your project?”

“Dad said he’d have to bring it because it got ‘a little out of hand’,” and she held up her arms to demonstrate but her project on the life cycle of a butterfly that had been meant to fit into a shoebox had ended up being larger than the span of her arms.  Aunt Lucy didn’t seem surprised to hear it.  

“Same thing happened to Peyton’s in first grade,” she said.

Peyton snorted at that, “you mean, Dad and Altair got a little out of hand.”  She got up from the breakfast table and dragged her bookbag off the back of the chair.  “Parents, right?” she said to Emily.

“Right,” Emily agreed.

–

First grade was almost over before Emily ever got to see the baby that dragged her away from the sparkling waters of the Caribbean.  Without so much as asking her opinion, her entire family had uprooted her from the friendly, sunny, endless Atlantic ocean and dropped her into a snowy hellhole.

Emily liked to remind her Mother, “I don’t like it here.”

And Mother, who had agreed back when they all assumed their temporary move was actually _temporary_ , liked to agree, “I hate scarves, and coats.”  

“And tights,” Emily said.

“And, honestly,” Mother added, “not too fond of your father right now.”

“Haytham’s stupid too.” 

It was good to laugh with Mother; better to laugh (so they told her) than to cry.  But Emily still didn’t like the snow or the cold or the land.  She daydreamed of the endless water and the peek-a-boo fins of the dolphins and sharks that followed the ship.  

Haytham showed up with his girlfriend (or so everyone had resolved to call Ziio as much) while Emily was practicing addition in the kitchen.  Dad was there, because he was always there when homework had to be done, obnoxiously peering over his book to make sure she was still working on it.  While she was thankful for the reprieve of being stared at, she was left standing in the kitchen trying to summon up something to say about the scrunch-faced baby they showed her.

“He’s adorable,” she said without commitment.  

Haytham ruffled her hair up with his hand, and said, “thanks for the enthusiasm, Emily.”  He’d spent two summers in England with Jennifer and came back home thinking he’d been naturalized as a real Brit.  While she didn’t personally care about his new accent, their Father always looked like he was one-breath away from strangling Haytham.  

“It’s not like you wanted him,” Emily snapped at him.

Ziio, who really was pretty, laughed at that.  She was holding the baby (Connor or something like that) in one arm but she raised her hand to offer Emily a high-five.  And since she earned it, for making Haytham shut his mouth for once, she stared him down as she lifted her hand to slap it against Ziio’s.  

–

Emily didn’t whine, wheedle, whimper or complain about New York and the snow and how much she missed her home (on the big, beautiful ocean) but, she did present her argument on why they should move back to the yacht with a series of well thought out visuals.

Father and Mother sat in the kitchen chairs, and Mama held the papers while Emily stood in front of them and explained it all.

“The weather is warm,” was a picture of them all in beach gear, enjoying the sun.  “There are no diapers,” which was the single most important factor as far as she was concerned.  “We will have our own kitchen,” would mean she wasn’t saddled with limited, bland and otherwise tasteless food options when her parents took advantage of the hospitality of relatives and declined to cook for themselves.  “We have a ship,” seemed obvious but she needed them to remember it.  

Father was smiling but he was trying not to.  Mother was covering her mouth with her hand (trying not to laugh), saying, “I think she wants to go home, don’t you?”

“I’m getting that same idea,” Father said.

Mama winked at her.

–

Emily spent her summer far from the suffocating flatness of _land_ , out and free on the sea where the wind blew her hair away from her face.  She got to snorkel in the ocean (again) and ride on the jet skis and bake in the sun with her Mother.  

She ran through the ship from bow to stern, without a single concern for the amount of noise she was making.  

At night, when it was quiet, and the sun was gone down beneath the ocean, she always found her Father on the top deck, with just a single light on, stretched out on an old chair, watching the stars.

When they were fresh from escaping the mainland, he always said: “does your Mother know you’re up here?”  But, five weeks out to sea, he just pulled her up onto the chair with him.

They found all the constellations together; his voice somber and still when there was nothing but water around them, telling her all the stories he’d learned.

–

Despite her petitions to the contrary, Emily found herself back on land for second grade.  She was dropped into whatever school was closest to the shoreline, like they wanted her to suffer.  She spent half the year staring out the window, day dreaming about being anywhere but there.

That must have been why she ended up getting the box of ‘conference required’ checked on her report card.  She sat in her room listening to her parents worry over what it meant.

“I don’t know what the big deal is,” Emily said when they were waiting outside the door of her classroom, “Haytham had these conferences all the time.”

Edward snorted.  Mother rolled her eyes, “Haytham got expelled.  That’s not a future we’d like to see repeated.”

“You don’t have any idea why we’re here,” Mama asked again.  She knew that Emily knew, probably the same way Father (looking sideways at her) knew she’d never tell.  Emily shook her head and Mama sighed, and they all stood there and waited.

In the classroom, her teacher (a skinny, young-ish type) looked at her Father with some concern, and then glanced back and forth between her two Mothers.  Emily was seven and no expert, but she was fairly sure the teacher was working out how to ask which parent was which just before Father said, “I’m Edward, this is Anne,” and he motioned at Mother, “and Mary, we’re Emily’s parents.”  

The teacher didn’t look convinced, but Father wasn’t happy either.  Mother crossed her legs at the knee in exactly the way she did when she was all set to win an argument no matter what but Mama was biting her lip to keep from sighing.

–

“Hey,” Father said to her when she was pouting over homework.

“What?” she asked without looking up.  

“Hey,” he said again.  His fingers–thick and heavy and rough–snuck across the table to poke at her hand.  She didn’t smile because then he’d think he was funny.  “Hey,” he said again.  He poked at her knuckles one more time so she looked up at him.  There he was, leaning forward on the table with his chin over his hand, watching her write numbers.  “I miss it too.”

Emily didn’t want to cry, but she didn’t like being _here_  and nobody else did either.  “We don’t have to stay,” she said.

Father smiled, but it was terribly sad, and he said, “we do, until the school year is over.”

“Why?” Emily demanded.

“Because you finish what you start,” Father said.  

–

Summer was long-long days on the yacht.  There was a parade of relatives, everyone from Uncle Malik and Uncle Altair and their four obnoxious children (especially the boys) that filled the ship with noise from the bottom to the top, to Jennifer who always came alone.  

Jennifer was a stranger as much as a sister, but she never treated Emily like she was an inconvenience (not the way Haytham did).  She taught her how to play checkers, and that was nice.  

“Dad said you like it on the boat,” Jennifer said.

“It’s a ship,” Emily corrected.  “I like the ocean.  I like that its big.”

Jennifer always smiled at her, always the same smile, like she was regretting something.  “You know, Mary and Anne were my teachers most of the time.  Mary’s got a degree, she could probably be your teacher if you asked her.”

“Why don’t you call them Mom?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know,” Jennifer said, “when I met them, my Mother had just died.  They raised me with Dad but–I don’t know, they never asked me to call them Mom.”

–

Emily was all set to demand to be home schooled for third grade but Dad disappeared in the last two weeks of summer and left Mother and Mama standing around looking worried and discontent.  

“He says he doesn’t know when he’ll be back,” was Mama’s quiet-quiet anger.  

Mother was leaning against the bar, looking sad and unsure, “maybe we should go out there?  Look, I don’t necessarily like it either but we’re never going to separate them and if we try, we’ll lose Edward.”  

“What about Emily?” Mama demanded. 

Mother looked at her.  It was that grown-up look, the one that always happened right before she was asked to understand something that she shouldn’t have had to understand (that’s who Mother always phrased it, I know you’re a child but–).  “Your Dad needs our support, Emily.  His cousin got sick, and you know Federico’s important to him.”

Emily was peevish before third grade, prone to selfishness, but she said, “how sick?” not because she was weighing her choices on agreeing or protesting based on whether or not Uncle Federico was going to die, but because her Father had never left in the middle of the night and simply never come back before.  

Mama was rubbing her face and Mother was saying, “he’s going to be okay but it was scary.”

“Fine,” Emily said.  “For _Dad_.”

–

Emily spent most of third grade cataloging Flavia and Marcello’s every annoying attribute in an attempt to figure out if they were more, less or the same level of annoying as Darim, Tazim and Sef.  On the one hand, there was one more of the triplets, but on the other hand: if Emily shoved Sef backward off a slide because he spit on her, Uncle Malik and Uncle Altair generally didn’t get too angry.

She threw one cup of grape juice on Marcello and Mother and Father spent two hours laughing hysterically about how they were going to be taken out by hitmen because Uncle Ezio was _so upset_  he’d started shouting in another language.  Mama hadn’t found it as funny when she grounded Emily to her room for two days.  

–

Uncle Federico wasn’t terrible though.  He was always quiet when she was around.  He liked to read and his backyard was sunny (and quiet because his children were civilized) so he didn’t care if she invited herself to sit outside with him while the adults and the kids destroyed the house.

“How’s life?” he asked her when she showed up.

Emily sighed, “well I’m not dead.”

That always made him smile, and _nod_ , like he understood exactly what she meant.

–

Summer sent her back to the glorious freedom of her ship.  But it also brought Connor–a fat bellied two year old.  Connor necessitated Haytham who had not grown out of being obnoxious and unwanted.

Everywhere Emily went she found one of them: Connor in the playroom chewing on the toys, Haytham on the top deck with Father after dark–always _talking_  low and uncertain.  

Connor was out on the sundeck with Mother, getting tanned like it wasn’t redundant, like his skin wasn’t already dark enough.  He liked it though, sprawling out on her beach chair with his big round belly pointed skyward and his dark hair spread across a beach towel.  

Connor was with Mama after supper, reading baby books.

Emily spent a month gritting her teeth until Haytham poked her in the cheek one morning, at breakfast, and said, “stop frowning, why don’t you ever smile?”

Then she slapped him as hard as she could, right across his stupid face, and it didn’t even matter that all of the adults gasped together or that Connor (who had been happy and eating fistfuls of fruit cereal) suddenly burst into tears.  It only mattered that Haytham stared at her with a pink hand print on his face and his mouth hanging open.  

“Why don’t you ever go away?” she demanded.  And since they were going to send her anyway, Emily just went ahead and took herself to her room.  She sulked there while the adults held a meeting about her behavior (she couldn’t hear them, but its what they always did).  

She expected Mother, who often came to explain to her why she couldn’t act out, but it was Haytham himself that knocked on her door.  He was an imperfect picture of their father–with dark hair and a stranger’s smile–and he shuffled in when she looked at him.  She didn’t make space for him so he sat on the very edge of her bed and picked at his own fingernails.

“Why are you so angry at me?” he asked (but he didn’t look at her).

Emily hadn’t been marinating in any particular hatred for her brother (that she knew of) but she pulled at the strings in her blanket the way he picked at his nails, and she mumbled over saying, “because you left.  You just _left_  and you act like nobody cares.”

Haytham was quiet.  When he finally did look at her, he said, “I didn’t leave you,” like it had taken him his entire life to figure that out.  “I’m just too old to live with my parents.”

“Whatever,” Emily said.  But also, “even Jennifer visits–and she never lived here.”

Haytham laughed at that, “Jenny did live here.  We all lived here.”  He rubbed his hands against his thighs.  “Look, I’ve done a lot of stupid things,” and that was an understatement, “but, I’m trying to do better.  I’m going to try to come around more.”

Emily picked at her blanket because encouraging Haytham would be almost like forgiving him.  “That’s fine,” seemed like he’d understand.

“I’m glad you approve,” he said.  And then, “you want me to help you make a–uh–presentation to convince them to homeschool you next year?”  

Emily glared at him.

Haytham had his hands up, “I’m just offering.  I was their kid for eighteen years, I might be able to help.”

“Well you couldn’t hurt,” Emily conceded.

–

Fourth grade started with Mama smiling at her well-thought out presentation (set to music) with Father at her side, holding Connor so he didn’t ruin the props.  Mother was holding the cue cards while Haytham manned the slide show.  Emily wasn’t too keen on giving Haytham credit for anything, but Mama didn’t even bother to hold a family meeting before she said,

“Alright, Emily.  We’ll homeschool you–but, you have to work just as hard.”

–

Life was glorious again, out on the ocean with no direction and no destination.  Fourth-and-fifth grade breezed by.  Emily did her homework in her swim suit, soaking up the sun with her Mother.  

She learned about habitat and marine biology with her Father, out in the ocean with salt water in their hair.

She read books after dark, yawning herself to sleep on the top deck.

–

Sixth grade stranded her back on land, not for an emergency.  Her parents said they ‘wanted to give her the option’.  Emily tolerated it just long enough for her teachers to call her parents in for a conference.  Father and Mother and Mama showed up prepared to work on anything from behavior problems to catching up on lagging subjects, and Emily sat at their side while the teacher told them that Emily just wasn’t being challenged.

Sixth grade became seventh overnight, and Emily was surrounded by curious girls that wanted to know about how she lived: about the ship, about her money (although she didn’t know much about money), about her relatives (nothing important to tell there).  It was nice, in its own way, to be revered.

–

But, when it was over and the summer was back, she found her Father on the top deck of the ship.  “Hey,” she said (the way he’d always said it to her), “I don’t think that’s for me.”

Father smiled, and he nodded, “it wasn’t ever for me either.”

“Are we rich?” Emily asked.

That made him laugh, “yes,” didn’t seem like the whole answer. 

“Really rich?” Emily asked.

“Yes.”

“As rich as Uncle Federico?”

Father considered that a minute, “I don’t know.  Probably–it doesn’t matter, we’re richer than we’ll ever need to be.  Why?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said.  “Some girls asked me.  Is everyone rich–I mean, in the family?”

“Yes,” and Father was amused at her expense.  He was _delighted_  by this sudden revelation.

“Why?” Emily asked.

“Well,” he said, “our Grandfather was a prick, and he cheated on our Grandmother with every girl he could.  But our Grandmother was very, very rich.”

“Was she nice?” Emily asked.

Father’s face said _no_ , but he shrugged.  “She was nice to some people.  She gave us this ship, she gave us the money that lets us live how we want.  That’s not so bad.”

There was more to the story; a whole history full of it, but Emily just leaned back into her chair.  “I don’t want to go back next year.  Maybe in high school.  My friend Ophelia told me that, in high school, I’d get any boyfriend I want.”

Father just groaned at that.  “Just be smarter than your brother,” he said.

“I’m already smarter than Haytham,” she said.  And then, maybe, “I’m not sure I want a boyfriend.  Girls are cuter.”

“They’re generally smarter as well,” he agreed.  “But it’s always good to keep your options open.  You don’t have to decide now, or ever.”

“Well, you never did,” Emily said.  Father didn’t say anything to that, just smile and fold his arms behind his head, and they were quiet together, enjoying the peace and the freedom of the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always, still accepting prompts at [my tumblr](http://tellcardtowrite.tumblr.com)


	10. Kids introducing significant other to family

“I mean,” was Darim (the great, the wise) from across the room. “I guess you could ask your boyfriend along.” The football he’d been planning to throw to Tazim (for the past ten minutes) was poised in his upheld hand, caught in the philosopher grip of his fingertips. His stupid face pinched with perfect thought as he labored through the ordeal of having an original thought, “if you wanted him to dump you almost immediately.”

“Not immediately,” Tazim called from across the room. “We are still rich.” 

Jaida sighed, the depth of her indifference rising up from the base of her lungs like a great tide before sweeping out again. Her finger dragged across the screen of her tablet to flip the magazine page before she dragged her eyes upward. “Do you really think anyone cares who you’re dating? It’s Dad’s birthday, we all know what’s going to happen.”

“Edward flies in and takes the doghouse,” Tazim called.

Darim gave up the pretense of throwing the football to announce, “Uncle Ezio and Uncle Leonardo get caught making out in the broom closet with a bottle of wine.”

“Haytham tries to prove he’s not the worst kid in the family by pointing out Jenny didn’t show up again.”

Jaida rolled her eyes, “Aunt Claudia and Uncle Kadar make tacos at three in the morning while arguing with Father about why they never had kids.”

“The Auditore brats act like they shit gold. Suck-up Peyton tries to make friends by name-dropping people she met in Hollywood.”

“Connor probably climbs something and Uncle Edward and Haytham get in a fight,” Tazim said. “Uncle Federico makes it worse.”

Which made Darim clap his hands together, “oh! Family photo albums!”

“Family dinner.”

“Family breakfast.”

“Family breakfast,” they all said together, with the heaviness of every year that came before. The great culmination of the clusterfuck that had become their Father’s birthday. The point during which the festivities broke down and the adults were tired-and-old, with sagging shoulders and defeated stares. All of the children (a good portion of them over the age of twenty two) were solemn and apologetic about being assholes while the children (which, Sef figured, they weren’t anymore) tried to lighten the mood with chatter (and failed).

Jaida sighed again, “Dad cries.”

“Yeah,” Tazim agreed, “that part sucks.”

Darim sat on the chair he’d abandoned when the found the football under it. “Mom calls him and he acts like everything’s fine.”

The silence dragged another minute. “Maybe I should just ask him over at Christmas or something,” Sef said instead. “You know, start small. How bad could it be if it’s just Christmas?” And he expected his siblings to agree with him, not to turn to look at him with the exact same look when he posed ‘what if I invited my boyfriend to Dad’s birthday family reunion.’


	11. Maria's Pregnant

(April)

“All I’m saying,” Maria slurred in the space between her mouth and the glass of liquor she was holding, “is that I’m about to commit myself to nine months of hard physical labor with a list of agreed upon restrictions, I should get some compensation.”  (At least, Malik thought that was what she was saying.)  It was hard to know with the English accent and the drunkenness if that was exactly correct.)

“Like what?” Altair asked.  He’d tried arguing her into taking money and she’d countered him every single time, saying that he’d done her a favor and she wanted to repay them.  (When pressed, she would admit that she liked the idea of a child but she didn’t want to be bothered with the care and feeding of one.)  “More booze?”

“Sex,” Maria countered.

Malik laughed (bright and loud, and a little tipsy) at that.  “You’e a lesbian.”

“So?” was indignant.  “Look,” and she slid out of her chair to come sit next to him.  Her drink spilled on his shirt as she wrapped her arm around his shoulders.  Her voice was close and warm.  “We can share, you can go first.”  Her fingers were working their way through the spaces between his shirt buttons.  Her nails scratched across his skin in a way that wasn’t anything but promising.  

Altair leaned forward to glare at them, working up to being offended about Maria groping his husband (most likely), but Malik said, “you should give us head,” because those ideas Maria was whispering into his ear were practically perfect.  

There was his husband, all but stripping off his clothes in joy, staring down the offer like working out how much it would cost him.  Thinking it through didn’t stop him from easing off the couch, or pulling his shirt off or dragging Malik forward so he could get easier access to his dick.  But once he was there, warm and real and comfortable between Malik’s thighs he said, “this counts as something off your list.”

“Fine,” Malik said.

Maria was delighted with soft little kisses against Malik’s cheek.  “Can I kiss you?” she asked, and then louder, “can I kiss you husband?”

“You can try.  He gets mouthy when he gets head,” Altair said.

 

(May)

It wasn’t that Altair had  _forgotten_.  Because he didn’t  _forget_  things that Malik remembered (although it was hard to know what Malik would choose to remember and at which time).  In fact, he had been standing in the kitchen spinning his wedding ring on his finger while he considered doing some sort of landscaping with the muddy hellhole of the backyard when he very suddenly was reminded that he needed to remember:

“So,” Malik asked across the kitchen island.  He had appeared with bedhead and a surly frown, as if summoned from the discontent Altair felt about the dirt that refused to grow grass staring him down through the back windows.  Dirt was not a proper substance on which his child could play.  It would have to be replaced.

“So?” Altair repeated.  (He began the mental review of important dates and arguments they may have had recently to see what he’d misplaced.)

“So, its our anniversary,” Malik prompted.  “The anniversary of the day we were married.  The  _first_  anniversary.”

“Are we celebrating that?” came springing right out of his mouth before he could think.  “I thought you said we couldn’t celebrate more than one anniversary a year and I already made you go with me to London for our we finally met again anniversary.”

Malik was glaring at him.  “You’re cute.”

“I would prefer the term gorgeous, I’d settle for handsome.  I don’t have the right face for cute.   _Kadar’s_ cute.”

“What is it?  What did you get me?”  Malik didn’t sound like the sort of person that should receive a present or even the sort that would enjoy one.  He sounded much more like Lucy who was still working through the notion she was wealthy beyond reason.  Malik started drumming his fingers on the counter top to really punctuate his point.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Altair said.  “You told me that I couldn’t buy or make you anything.  You said if I tried to celebrate more than one anniversary a year that you would divorce me and take half my net wealth.”  (Those were, in fact, Malik’s exact words.)  “I like the we met for the first time anniversary.”

So when his husband smiled at him, it was a surprise.  Malik reached behind his back to pluck an envelope out of the waist band of his sleep pants.  “I got you something,” he said.  He set the envelope down on the counter but didn’t push it forward where Altair could get it.  “The first wedding anniversary is paper and I wanted this to be meaningful.”

“You did?” Altair said.

“Yes, so, here.”  Malik slid the envelope forward and then just stood there watching him (very carefully) as Altair opened it.  The paper inside looked like any other folded over sheet of printer paper.  It was otherwise entirely unremarkable.  When he flattened it out, it took him a few tries to fully understand what he was looking at.  

“Maria’s pregnant?” 

Malik was smiling at him from the other side of the island, as if he hadn’t masterminded the deception that the doctors Altair had been paying (for too much) for hadn’t just been ignoring his inquiries.  As if the bastard hadn’t literally, two days ago, been telling him that it might not work the first time.  Fertility was a touchy thing and neither him nor Maria had ever tried to have a child before.  And the bastard had  _known_.  “Congratulations,” Malik said. “You’re going to be a Dad.”

There were simply no words.  He went around the island and pulled Malik into a hug and kissed him and held onto him while he reread the whole paper again (most of it was medical jargon that he didn’t understand) and Malik leaned against his body.  “We’re going to be parents,” Altair repeated.

“Yeah,” Malik said.  He kissed Altair again, “we are.”

(June)

Malik was just as happy to erase the entire clusterfuck that was the month of June from his memory as to try to recall any series of events from that month in order.  It was easiest to refer to it as ‘Kadar’s wedding’ and not thing about how they had been stuck in Delaware (the first state to ratify the Constitution) with half of Italy for almost an entire fucking week.

The only good thing to come of it was his stupid brother’s decision to gift every close male relative with single pack Viagra.  Not just for the obvious reason, but also because Kadar had somehow managed to fill an entire bowling bag with the stupid little packs and snuck it into Altair’s luggage.  So Malik had the absolute delight of watching his husband freak out about trying to hide his unwanted stash of dick drugs for three straight days.

The rest of the wedding was shit, Altair panicking and protesting how he hadn’t bought the Viagra had been the only memorable event.  (Never mind Malik had been laughing too hard to participate in the conversation.)

 

(July)

Altair was good for frightening statistics.  He’d memorized all kinds of numbers about how pregnancies could go bad and when and how they shouldn’t make plans or make purchases before a certain point because it was bad luck.  He wasn’t superstitious by nature.

Malik was good at pushing his fingers through Altair’s hand when he wandered off in his head, “if I tell you that it’ll be okay, will you believe me?”

“Will you make it sound believable?” Altair asked.

There was a pause, Malik moved so he was standing right in front of him.  They were out-in-public (shopping with Peyton, meandering past the baby section).  “I do not believe any rational argument could counter an irrational fear.  What if I promised that we can have completely filthy sex when we get home?”

Altair shrugged, “I like filthy sex.”  

“I know,” Malik agreed.

But the baby section was just staring at him.

Malik looked over his shoulder at it.  “What if I promise you that I’ll let you drag me to every single unreasonably priced baby store in the country to buy far more supplies than can ever be used for our first child?”

Altair stopped staring at cute outfits and bibs and looked at Malik’s perfectly patient face.  He was smiling at a technicality long before Malik realized what he’d said, “first?” he repeated.

“If you survive this ordeal, we’ll talk about having another.”

“You said  _first_ ,” Altair repeated.  “Deal,” before Malik could take it back.  

 

(August)

Maria looked distinctly uncomfortable.  Pregnancy had not given her (what Malik would consider) a glow but exaggerate the paleness of her skin.  She had a bag full of snacks (fully approved to be healthy for the baby) at her side that she was picking at now and again while they waited, but mostly she shifted in her seat and grumbled under breath.  

“Is there anything I can do?” Malik asked.

“At this juncture, I do not believe there is,” Maria snapped back.  She didn’t look even slightly repentant about it either.  In fact, when Altair was not there, she was more or less a fire-breathing demon.  

Malik didn’t fight her.  His Mother would have shown up just to slap him if he’d tried.  Instead he said, “it’s only a few month months.”

“Yeah, I’ll shove a watermelon up your ass and tell you it’s only a few more months.”  She shifted again and found that it did nothing to make her more comfortable.  “Is Altair going to show up?  I don’t like these clothes.”  She plucked at the dress she was wearing.  

“Yes,” Malik said.  

Maria let her head fall back and mumbled something under her breath.  When she turned to look at him, she said, “this is just more uncomfortable than I thought it would be.  I’m not unhappy to have your baby.  I just,” and there was the important bit, “I feel like it means to much to the idiot.  You understand, I say I hate you, I mean I’m uncomfortable and you understand.”

Malik nodded.  “I do.”

“Altair would think it meant I don’t want to have the baby.”

That was true.  “It’s okay.  You can vent all your anger at me.”

Maria smiled and (thank God) that was the moment Altair chose to walk in.  He sat in the chair between them, falling into a conversation about any updates he might have missed and somewhere in the middle of Maria saying everything was good (again) and being called back to to the ultrasound (at last), Altair remembered Malik existed long enough to kiss him.  

 

(September)

They were having a daughter.

“What are we going to name her?” felt like it had been punched straight out of his chest.  They were sitting at the breakfast table, Malik sipping coffee and looking over the morning paper as if life could continue to be so mundane in the wake of such news.  It felt like they’d been whispering ‘the baby’ for months, ever since Maria was confirmed to be pregnant and all that time it had been an abstract notion.  A baby.  A formless sort of thing, devoid of personality or future, just a notion.  It shouldn’t have mattered, and who cared about the sex of the baby, but it seemed to drown him regardless.  

They were having a daughter.

“I’d prefer not to name her after a fruit or vegetable,” Malik said.  He even looked up from his paper long enough to join the conversation in progress.  (Not that there was much of one.)

“So, Cucumber Jane is a no go?”

Malik narrowed his eyes at him, like he did when he didn’t want to smile, and then said, “why not name her Michelle?”

That was a callback, one might say, to a previous argument.  About the girl in Paris that had done her very best to flirt with Altair in open view of the whole world (and her parents who disapproved of the whole thing almost as much as Malik).  It had been a friendly argument over an absurd but delicate matter of extracting himself from the lovesick gaze of a teenager mooning over him.  (And that, Malik said, is why you shouldn’t go to the pool shirtless.)  “I’d prefer we not name our daughter after our affairs.”

“I suppose Leona is out then,” Malik said so very calmly one might have mistaken him for being serious.  But his lips were coiled up in a sly grin.  

“Lenora isn’t a bad name,” Altair said.  “Although if you name our daughter after the guy Ezio is  _still_  fucking, it’ll make Christmas more complicated.”

Malik snorted at that.  “Heaven forbid.  Alright,” was serious, “I’m sure you have a list.”

“I’m sure you have one,” Altair countered.

“Of course I have a list.”  And it just so happened, he had that list on his phone.  As it happened, so did Altair.  

 

(October)

Malik was not annoyed by how easily Altair was distracted by baby things.  It was charming.  When he seemed annoyed by it, it was only because they were trying to shop for Peyton’s Halloween costume while the girl in question was two and a half breaths away from a full meltdown.  Her Mother, Lucy, and her Uncle, Altair, were over in the baby section of the costume aisle, awwing over babies in sheep costumes.

“LIttle Baby Jaida can be a sheep and you can be Little Bo Peep!” Lucy was saying.

Altair was delighted, full of light and laughter and love, “I’d have to get a longer skirt though.”

Peyton was filled head to toe with hateful spite, glaring at them while she held onto Malik’s hand.  She turned her face to look at him (accusingly), “who is baby Jaida?”

“Oh!” Lucy said, “look at this one, it’s an owl.  Look at how cute this.  If she comes out with Malik’s skin it would be adorable on her.”  And she let her hand move away from the costume to add, quieter, “and if she comes out with Maria’s she can be this,” and she held up a baby vampire costume complete with exaggerated black widows peak.

Altair cracked up.  Peyton started making the noise that preceded a fit.  Malik cleared his throat to call back Lucy because he loved his niece well enough, but it was his last Halloween before he was obligated to dress small children in colorful costumes and he was going to spend it not consoling a screaming child.  He traded Peyton for his husband.

Altair slid an arm around him when he was close enough and said, “the sheep is cute.”

“It is,” Malik agreed.  Because it was.  All the baby costumes were cute.  (And would be made cuter by the addition of their child.)  “But you cannot wear the sex costume outside.”

Altair smiled with pink all in his cheeks and pulled Malik in so he could kiss him.  “What if I wear it tonight?” was whispered very quietly against his cheek.  Malik pinched him (but he didn’t say no) and Altair laughed again.

 

(November)

Maria had shown up at the start of November looking like she had finally reached the point at which she could no longer pretend not to be uncomfortable (for his sake, he understood).  She dropped her bags at the front door and slapped her purse on the table and said, “make me a fucking apple pie or I’ll have to cannibalize someone.”

Altair had not had the things to make a pie in his house because he did not usually make them except at Thanksgiving but he went on a brief trip to the store and returned with what he felt was plenty of supplies.

That was before Maria asked for another two days later, and then another two days after that.  By Thanksgiving he had gotten so practiced at making the pies that Desmond (who liked his pie before he was an expert) remarked, “this is amazing.  Did you do something different?”

Maria was dangerous enough even without a knife in her hand but as she happened to have one in her hand when Desmond asked, Altair just smiled, “nope.  Same pie as always.”

 

(December)

Maria cornered him (literally, in a corner) to say, “we need to throw your stupid husband a baby shower.  I know he has everything he thinks he needs but my understand of baby showers is that it’s not about gifts.  Find a way to make him go to the mansion, I’ll take care of the arrangements.”

Malik had only said, “you need his permission to hold any sort of gathering at the house, it’s impossible to get anyone to go there if he hasn’t agreed to it.  Not the family, but caterers and event planners also won’t go near it.”

Maria smiled at him, “you’re his husband.”

“I don’t own his Grandmother’s house,” Malik countered.  (Because he didn’t and it was simply one thing he had no interest in ever challenging.  Altair owned the house, Malik visited it once in a while.)  “I could maybe get him to agree to a Christmas party there?  An early one in case you have the baby early?”

“Good,” Maria said.  “So do that.”

–

Altair had been dragged to the mansion under false pretenses.  He had been dressed in a holiday sweater, shoved in a car and driven to the mansion under the guise of early Christmas. 

But the ballroom in the back was filled with tables covered in pretty pink table clothes.  Maria met him at the door with a baby bottle on a string that she offered to him and said, “if you say the word baby, you have to give up the necklace to whoever catches you.  Whoever gets the most at the end of the party gets to keep this baby.”  And her smile was pure evil.  (That couldn’t possibly be the real reward.)  Then Malik threw a T-shirt at him that once unfolded said ‘new Mom’.  

“It’s your baby shower,” Maria said.  “Eat cake, open presents, watch the morons try to chug alcohol out of baby bottles.  I found a lot of games, I couldn’t decide which I liked.”

Altair hugged her and Maria hugged him back.  “Thank you,” he said.  She shoved him back when she was tired of being held onto (because she got hot, she said, all the time).  “Who’d you invite?”

“Everyone,” Maria said.  

 

(January)

Malik had thought, despite what he was told, that there was simply no way to love anyone on sight.  It was as impossible a notion as any, but there he was, leaning up against his husband’s body, the pair of them looking down at their brand-new-daughter.  She was discontent at her living conditions, surly as her Mother had been all through labor, pink and healthy and  _beautiful_.  

“I love her,” Altair whispered.  Like a revelation, like he hadn’t thought it was possible.  There were tears in his eyes as he smiled and Malik ran his finger down her perfect little cheek.  “This is our daughter,” Altair whispered.  “We have a daughter, we’re fathers.”


	12. Sofia and Leonardo talk threesomes

“Ezio is going to ask you to marry him.” Leonardo found her in the library of the old house. The Mansion, as she liked to think of it. They had been summoned through their association with the families, always just after Christmas, always at the mansion. It was the second day of seven, when everyone was still in good spirits and the many children were still getting along. (The adults, they got along as well as always.) 

Sofia tucked a scrap of paper into the book so she’d remember her place after she closed it and set it aside. Leonardo had brought her a drink (something clear, like water or vodka) and one for himself. He sat in the arm chair closest to hers and crossed his legs at the knee while he waited for some reaction. Sofia had developed a particular love for making Leonardo wait (because he always got distracted in the middle of his impatience, and left muttering about how he should carry a notebook with him everywhere and never did). She sipped her drink (it was vodka, before noon). “I had some idea he might.”

“I designed your engagement ring,” Leonardo said. “It’s very beautiful. If you turn him down, ask if you can keep the ring regardless. It was custom made for you.”

“Diamonds?”

“Nothing so obvious,” Leonardo assured her. 

“It seems underhanded to tell me about it before he has his chance,” she said. She sipped the vodka because alcohol made sparring with Leonardo more interesting. It took the edge off how infuriating he could be simply by breathing. It wasn’t even anything he intended to do, but it exuded from his every pore, the unstoppable force of his intelligence and creativity. And it was very fucking annoying. 

“I was trying to engineer a threesome but my options are fairly limited. Federico and Cristina along with Edward and his lesbian wives are more limbs than I care to have to keep track of, Desmond is a prude and even if he weren’t, Lucy wouldn’t share him. I probably convince Kadar to let me give him a blowjob but his wife would cut my throat if I did. Altair would fuck me–”

“But he’d need medical attention afterward?”

“–but Malik won’t let me near him. That too. It has to be inadvisable to have rough sex with a dick that big.” He was smiling over the idea of it though. 

“Malik won’t let you?” she repeated. “Threesomes aren’t on his sex list?”

“Ah, threesomes are on his sex list. It’s specifically me that’s been barred from joining. He said, it wouldn’t be any fun for him because neither Altair nor I would remember he was even there. He’s not wrong; most of my sexual feelings toward Altair are somewhat violent.” Leonardo shrugged that off and took a drink out of his glass. (There was no telling if it was vodka or water in his.) “That leaves me with the man I’ve been fucking and his possible future wife. Since he’s decided that once he’s married we cannot fuck anymore, I felt it would be somewhat difficult to convince him to remove his clothes and put his dick in my mouth if he’s carrying around the engagement ring.”

“He’s a romantic at heart,” she agreed. She set the glass on the table with the book and shifted how she was sitting to really get a solid look at Leonardo. He was nonthreatening to most. Many people mistook his thinness as a sign of weakness. His freckles and his genial smile were marks of a timid man and more than one person had assumed that meant he was easily overpowered. “I thought you told him that I was the best choice for a wife because I’d let you keep fucking him.”

Leonardo shrugged. “The Auditore brothers have preconceived notions of how life should work. I, the affair, cannot convince him it wouldn’t be a violation of his future wedding vows to keep having sex.”

“Federico fucks his cousin,” Sofia countered.

“With his wife’s consent.” That must have been the important part. Cristina allowed it and therefore it was acceptable. 

“Do you actually want a threesome or did you just want me to tell Ezio that I don’t mind if you blow him?” 

“I would accept either,” didn’t name a preference. It was followed up almost immediately with, “you don’t have to, you know. He loves you. He’d give me up and I can’t say that it wouldn’t be fair. I don’t love him the way you do, I’d miss the opportunity to make use of his body but everything else about him that I find attractive would remain the same. You don’t have to allow this if it makes you unhappy.”

Sofia leaned forward to lay her hand over Leonardo’s, to make sure he was really looking at her, and she said, “you think too highly of yourself,” was very gently put. “In general, men think too highly of sex. He uses you to scratch an itch that needs scratching. Whose to say I don’t have someone that does the same for me?”

Leonardo laughed and put a hand over top hers. He leaned forward so they were very confidential. “You shouldn’t tell him about Malik. Ezio is precious and simple and your intellectual infidelity will confuse him.”

“It wouldn’t matter to him at all,” Sofia countered, “because he was raised in a world where the only infidelity that matters is the one that involves dicks. This is what I mean, men think too highly of sex.”

They were very pleased with themselves, all pink in the face and grasping one another’s hands. Leonardo said, “You shouldn’t tell Malik either.”

Sofia laughed, “I’m not stupid. What would I say to him, Malik I’ve been in love with you since we met? Malik, sometimes I wake up in the morning and all I want is to call you to debate literary devices and fourteenth century morals?”

“How is that attractive to you?” Leonardo whispered.

“You got me drunk,” she said. “That’s morally reprehensible.”

Leonardo laughed all low and bubbling, making his cheeks flush red under the freckles. He nodded his head, “I’m drunk too,” was meant to even the playing field. “Maybe we should be more sober before we make agreements about sharing Ezio’s body.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “if we get him drunk and have our way with him, he’ll feel bad.”

Leonardo agreed. “I had this family reunion. This house makes my skin crawl. Maybe you should tell him we can’t fuck just so they’ll stop inviting me.”

“Boo hoo,” Sofia said, “I’m going to be marrying into this obligation. If I’m stuck, you’re stuck with me.” She tipped her head and kissed his pretty flushed cheek.

“Fine,” he sighed, “if you insist.”


	13. Shaun meets everyone pt1 (R)

_**son-of-no-one: @guyfawkes23** , we’re going to be in England next month.  maybe you could show  **@sass-badger** , how one properly handles a laptop. _

There was a great number of things that Shaun expected he’d manage with his life.  (And almost none of them had ended with him working in the basement IT office of a company he didn’t particularly like.)  He’d expected, by twenty five, to have a good job, a nice flat, possibly a girlfriend and an endless array of prospects.  Here he was, a troll in the dungeon, wearing a polo and a nametag with his name misspelled (for the third time in a row, so he’d given up).  He did have a flat, and a job but neither were  _nice_  exactly.  Instead of a girlfriend he had:

“You have to meet them,” Rebecca.

“I don’t,” Shaun countered.  “I have no desire for my private life to be splashed about the papers.  There’s enough speculation about me already.”

Rebecca folded her arms across the high top of the desk his monitor was hidden under.  She narrowed her eyes at him, to convey that he was completely wrong, and said, “setting aside that it would just be stupid not to meet the people you’ve spent an increasingly large number of hours harassing on social media, you would be  _stupid_  not to meet these men.  One of them is a billionaire who inherited several multinational businesses.  He already likes you, how hard would it be for you to network yourself into a nice job?”

“And I suppose,” he said motioning to the side, “right after I’ve got one for myself I could recommend you?”

Rebecca didn’t say duh but conveyed it with her entire body.  

“No,” Shaun said.

–

_**guyfawkes23: @son-of-no-one** ,  **@sass-badger** , have you tried turning it off and on again?_

_**notyourbrother: @guyfawkes32,**  its like the sun and the wind over here, could you please just agree to meet these idiots._

_**shaunrocks1: RT “@guyfawkes23,** its like the sun and the wind…” I’m sure he’d show up if you did._

_**notyourbrother: @guyfawkes23, @shaunrocks1,** done._

“It doesn’t count as you winning,” Altair said. 

Kadar couldn’t be 100% sure that it was even the first time he’d said it.  It had all the earmarks of having been the sixth, seventh or one millionth time that he said it because Malik’s counter was said in the exact way he repeated himself when he knew he couldn’t lose.  

“It does,” Malik said.  “Kadar and I are practically interchangeable.”

Kadar was just lounging in the first class waiting room, sinking into the seats that were more comfortable than his bed, trying not to get involved.  He had resolved not to use the headphones until they were actually on the plane (because the last thing he needed was to listen to them argue for god-knows-how-many-hours).  So, he could perfectly hear Altiar’s scoff, and the way he motioned at Kadar and when he said,

“So if you’re interchangeable, I should blow him in the airplane bathroom.”

“Uh,” Kadar said quietly.  

Malik whipped around to glare at him for having the audacity to not immediately be disgusted and outraged by the offer.  (It wasn’t that he was lusting after Altair, but that he hadn’t sex with anyone since Stephanie and just the possibility of having his penis touched by another person was enticing.)  “No,” Malik said to  _him_ , like he’d  _offered_  to let Altair suck his dick.  

“What were you going to get if you won?” Kadar asked.  He leaned forward so Altair could see he was being spoken to.

Altair didn’t answer but  _grin_  and that meant whatever it was, Malik wasn’t going to give up without a fight.  

“Well, as the officially winner of the bet who is not interchangeable with his brother, I say you both lost so you should just both pay up.”  Before Malik could be offended more, he added, “to each other.”

–

**guyfawkes23:** _I’m off to settle, once and for all, if @ **notyourbrother**  is really three toddlers in a trenchcoat.  _

_**bestofthree: rt “@guyfawkes23** : i’m off to settle…”  He is.  I’ve already settled it._

The super rich man, his boyfriend and his boyfriends little brother had graciously agreed to meet Shaun anywhere he preferred.  The correspondence had been accomplished through a intermediary (perhaps so neither side had the other’s contact information if they found out they hated one another).  Shaun had been trying to cope with the reality of his life, and with Rebecca’s over-excited chattering, so he had named the first deli that crossed his mind.  

That was how he ended up meeting Altair (just as intimidating in person), Malik (slightly more handsome in living colors) and Kadar (a good three times taller than expected) in the same deli that he stopped to grab a bite in every other day.

Rebecca was there too, sitting at the table while Shaun stood awkwardly (underdressed, underprepared, overall very underwhelming in comparison) to greet the three strangers.  “Yes, hello,” he said.  “Did you bring the laptop?” as a means of a joke.

Altair smiled (in a forgiving way).  Malik looked confused.  Kadar was biting his lip at the end of the line, looking as if he were working very hard not to laugh at them all.  “Are you  _shaunrocks1_?” he asked Rebecca.

“Also known as Rebecca,” she said and reached her hand up to shake his.  “I lost a bet.  You’re  _notyourbrother_?”

“Yes,” Kadar said.  “All my friends call me Kadar.”  Then he pulled a chair out from the opposite side of the table and invited himself to sit.  “So if I wanted to order something I could only get in England, what would I order?”

Shaun cleared his throat and motioned at the table.  “Please sit.”

–

**guyfawkes23:** _not sure if **@notyourbrother** is three toddlers but he definitely has three stomachs._

They relaxed by degrees, eased along the way by how Kadar didn’t seem to be able to maintain an atmosphere of awkwardness with anyone.  Malik was as prickly in person as he seemed online, the kind of guy that was easily mistaken to be uppity (not that Malik wasn’t arrogant).  

Altair was the one Shaun couldn’t quite figure out.  That must have been how he’d let himself be invited to dinner the next night.  Because he sat across the table from the man, held a conversation with him about local sights to see and the sorts of food that Kadar had to try while he was here, and not once did it seem as if he were speaking to an actual person.

“He’s weird, isn’t he?” Shaun asked once he’d closed the flat door behind them.  

Rebecca was shrugging it off like it was nothing.  “Which one?  I wouldn’t describe any of them as average.”

“Altair,” Shaun said.

“I didn’t notice.  Did you expect Kadar to be that tall?  He was huge.”

“No,” Shaun admitted.  “I expected him to be half that size.  If that much.”  

They compared notes, about expectation and reality, until long past bedtime.

–

**sass-badger:** _as I’ve said before, the anonymous internet is welcome to speculate as they wish.  I neither encourage nor discourage fan-based creations._

**sass-badger:** _however, if you’re tweeting questions at me you wouldn’t ask a stranger, please take a moment to rethink your choice._

**notyourbrother:** _come on, **@sass-badger** they just want to know if you had a threesome with  **@guyfawkes23!**_

**sass-badger:** _its a very long walk home,_ **@notyourbrother.**

Altair snorted at the phone as the notifications popped up on the screen.  He was killing time, lingering out on the sidewalk while he waited for Shaun to show up.  It was entirely possible the man wasn’t going to show up (it was hard to tell how that first meeting had gone).  Ten minutes after the time they’d agreed on, Shaun arrived red-in-the-face, clutching the strap of his bag and panting from exertion.  

“I’m here,” he gasped as he folded forward, hands around his knees as he sucked in air.  “Sorry I’m late.”

It was hard to know how to respond to that, “I could have sent a car.”

“No,” Shaun assured him as he stood up straight again.  “It’s fine.  I just haven’t had a reason to run in a bit.”  He huffed in an attempt to stop breathing heavy.  “We can’t all be good at athletics.”  Like an afterthought he added, “and academics, and be handsome,” he motioned at Altair’s entire body.  

“I have a horrible family if that makes you feel better,” Altair offered.

“Yes, that does help.”

“Good,” seemed like the correct response.  “Well, I brought you here to buy you clothes.”  He motioned at the storefront.  “They make very nice suits.”

“Ah,” Shaun said.  “That’ll be nice, everyone needs a good suit to be buried in.”

There was no real way to know how to take that.  “I’m not going to kill you.  Maria wanted to meet you so we’re going to a slightly different restaurant than we agreed on.”

“Maria Thorpe?  The Academy Award winning actress, Maria Thorpe?” Shaun repeated.

“Yes.”  He slid his phone back into his pocket.  “Is that okay?”

“Sure,” Shaun agreed.  

Altair wasn’t exactly sure how to handle Shaun’s contained energy.  It was very like London when she was begging for table scraps without wanting to beg.  As much as she tried, she simply couldn’t stand still, and that was Shaun, shifting on his feet but trying not to.  “Am I making you nervous?”

“I’m naturally very nervous,” Shaun assured him.  “I do best far away, you know behind a computer screen.  I find that’s where I excel.”

“You don’t have to do this if you’re uncomfortable.”

Shaun laughed, “I rather think I do have to do it.  What would I tell everyone if I didn’t?  I had the chance to meet Maria Thorpe but I turned it down?  I was offered a nice suit and I thought, this polo was nice enough already.”  He laughed as his hand plucked at his shirt and it caught on his name tag hanging off his shirt.  “This isn’t even how you spell my name.  I don’t believe I’ll turn this down just because I’m nervous.”

So they went.

–

**shaunrocks1:** _my life is complete, i got kissed by_ **@mariathorpe.**

Kadar must have had parasites.  The man was far taller than Shaun expected (somewhat rudely, based entirely on his internet persona) but he wasn’t as fat as a cow despite how much he’d eaten.  While Rebecca was slow-dancing with Maria (Thorpe, Academy Award Winning Actress), Shaun had declined the offer in favor of staying safely sitting at the table with his very nice new suit.  

“Have you gotten used to all this?” Shaun asked.  He motioned at the table of abandoned plates, and the glamour of a dance floor, and the spectacle of money that surrounded them.  If he were a few years younger he might have started ranting about the entitlement of money.  Yet, here he was, smack in the middle of it, feeling smallish and out of place.

“No,” Kadar said.  He set his fork down when he finished eating.  “You have to stop staring at Altair, man.  He’s just a guy.”

“Was I staring?”

Kadar nodded.  “A lot.”

Shaun looked embarrassed.  “He’s just–”  There was no word to sum it up.  There was simply something about Altair that was unnerving, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  It felt like a word on the tip of his tongue, as if he could just figure out the first letter he could figure out the rest.  

“Just a guy,” Kadar said.  “Hey, they’re supposed to go romantic sight-seeing tomorrow.  You want to meet somewhere and be regular humans?”

“What would regular humans do?” Shaun asked.

“Are you really going to act like you haven’t been teasing me with your super elite gaming prowess for the past year?  I want to see this super console that you and your  _roommate_  made.  I’ll buy food, drink, snacks, hookers, drugs, whatever you want.  I came to England to see this.”

Shaun laughed.  “Sure,” he said.

“Great,” Kadar said.  Then he stood up and dropped his napkin on the table.  “Come on, you came all this way, you can’t leave without dancing.”  He dragged Shaun up to his feet and over to the little dance floor.  “Only I hope you can lead because the only person I’ve danced with is bossy and she wouldn’t let me lead.”  

Shaun felt ridiculous, “I can try.”

They must have been too embarrassing to tolerate because Altair appeared after a moment to say, “let me,” and he slid into the space where Kadar had been.  Shaun looked over his shoulder to see Kadar going to dance with Maria (Thorpe, Academy Award and BAFTA Award winning actress) while Rebecca was chatting with Malik as they headed back to the table.  

“I’m not very good at this,” Shaun said.

Altair smiled and, for the first time, it seemed perfectly at ease.  “I am,” he said with zero humility.  Then he showed Shaun where to put his hands.  It was doomed to fail and so it was very confusing to suddenly be spurred into smooth motion.  Altair stepped backward, using his fingers to guide Shaun in a way that shouldn’t have worked.

“This is a bit insane,” Shaun whispered, and when the song came to an end, he was laughing from nerves while Altair’s hand took him by the wrist and pulled him back to the table.  Dessert had appeared while they were gone.  “I feel properly romanced,” he said when he took his seat.  

“Hey,” Malik objected.  Altair kissed him before he could say anything else.  It wasn’t entirely platonic or appropriate but that didn’t really stop them.

“Yeah,” Kadar whispered into his ear, “watching Altair dance with other guys supercharges Malik’s libido.  They’ll be like all night.  Just ignore it.”  


	14. Darim Sleeps with his Neighbor's Wife (PG-13)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for tumblr anon who asked about the kids' 18th birthday.

Tazim tried his best not to worry about the things that seemed to constantly worry his siblings.  He didn’t stress about school.  He wasn’t worried about his parents.  He didn’t daydream of his future obligations (like Sef) or create new future obligations (like Jaida).  But most importantly, he didn’t go out of his way to create new disasters like Darim.  

 _Nobody_  could create a disaster like Darim.  

Six days shy of their eighteenth birthday they were all alone in the house.  Tazim was luxuriating in the freedom of being trusted by his parents not to do dumb shit.  (And yes, he was playing video games in his underwear in the basement because he could.)  Sef was spending that time fretting over something because he always was.  It was only Darim that came barreling down the steps of the basement shouting, “I need to hide somewhere.”

Tazim said, “try the closet, there’s space now that Sef’s out.”  That might have been the end of it (as Tazim didn’t spend too much time worrying about things or being curious about them either).  Except that Darim literally yanked open the closet door to stuff himself inside of it.  That was peculiar (especially since there were far better places to hide) but even more strange was the sound of the doorbell ringing from upstairs.  

“Don’t let Sef answer the door!” came from inside the closet.

“What?” Tazim asked.  He paused his game and grabbed his pants off the couch next to him.  On the one hand, there was the general pact between brothers to protect Sef.  Not that Sef was incapable, just that he wasn’t  _inclined_.  Tazim stepped into his jeans as he was walking over to the closet, “what did you do?”

“You know Mrs. Rially that lives next door?”

“Yes.”

Darim did not provide any new information.  Instead he seemed to think that was all that needed to be said.  The doorbell rang again and Darim said, “don’t let Sef answer the door!”

“I’m not getting involved when I don’t know the facts,” Tazim responded.  He grabbed his shirt off the back of a chair and pulled it on over his head.  He barely heard:

“So I had sex with her.”

“What?” Tazim said.  “She’s like forty five!”

“I know.”

“She’s  _married_ ,” Tazim added.

“Yeah I know.  Look, she asked me to shovel the snow in her drive and said she’d pay me and since we have to pay Father back for the car, I said I would do it and we went inside so she could pay me and we ended up having sex.”

“So you’re a prostitute,” Tazim said.

“No.”  Darim huffed and opened the door far enough to say, “she didn’t even pay me.”

“You should always get the money that’s owed you,” Tazim said.  He sighed when the doorbell rang again.  “Is that her husband?”

“Maybe,” Darim said very, very quietly.  (Which meant,  _yes_.)

Tazim sighed as he headed up the stairs.  Sef was looking surly about being dragged out of his nerd cave (also known as his room) by the doorbell ringing but he was more confused when Tazim stopped him, “I’ve got it.”  They were both standing approximately in front of the door when Tazim opened it and found Mr. Rially standing there.  He had the distinct look of a grown man working himself up to a rolling boil.  A kind of red-tinged anger that must have come from being cuckolded by a neighbor kid.  

It didn’t explain why Sef blanched out pale upon the sight of him.

“Yes?” Tazim asked.  

“I’d like to speak to your parents,” Mr. Rially said.

“Sorry, they’re not here.”

“When will they be back?”

Tazim shrugged.  “They’re always here on our birthday.”

Sef was moving slowly backward, toward the stairs.  The motion drew Mr. Rially’s attention but he didn’t seem to care that Sef existed (of course he didn’t, there was almost no physical similarities between his brothers; Sef even had lighter colored hair than Darim).  

Mr. Rially was Trying His Best and it showed in the vibrating tightness of his whole body.  “When will that be?”

“The tenth,” Tazim said.  “Hey, man, I get that you’re angry about your wife and all.  I’m angry for you too, but if you do anything to my brother I’ll burn your house down.”  

“Wife?” Sef said from halfway up the stairs.

Tazim turned to look at him, “wife,” he repeated.  “Why did you fuck one of them too?”

Sef just smiled in exactly the way that meant he had and shook his head, “no.”  (This was why his brother was a terrible liar.)  

Mr. Rially (who had a teenaged son, who prior to this moment might not have announced his interest in sex with other boys) looked as if His Best was on the verge of failing.  He was an aging sort of man, with the look of having spent years behind a desk moving numbers from one column to another.  It wouldn’t have been even a little difficult to subdue Mr. Rially but it would have been better not to have to try.  

“I could give you the lawyers’ number,” Sef said.  “I mean, you’ll end up dealing with them either way.  So why not go directly to the source right?”

“I’m not interested in legal matters, I’m specifically interested in an explanation of how your parents raised their sons to disrespect a man’s home.”  Every word was squeezed through Mr. Rially’s teeth.

“Disrespect?” Sef repeated (he was even farther up the stairs at that point, but summoned by High Ideals that he could argue).  He was at the door in a minute.  “Your wife cheated on you with a seventeen year old,” seemed a bit harsh.  “Your son is seventeen?  So maybe the question you should be asking isn’t, how did  _our_  parents raise us but what kind of marriage you have that your wife is engaging in sexual acts  _kids_  the same age as yours.  Also,  _disrespect_?  You’re going to show up at our door and claim that we were raised with  _disrespect_  after five straight years of your territorial Christmas aggression?  After you had the city inspect our fences?  After you accused our Dad’s dog of ruining your rose bushes?” 

Sef had now worked himself up to equal levels of anger as Mr. Rially.  This was (perhaps) exactly the reason that Darim didn’t want Sef at the door.  

“We put up with your blinding lights and your ear-numbing Christmas music because we gave you the benefit of the doubt that you weren’t a racist piece of shit.  We let it slide when you had the city inspecting our fences and double checking our property lines because there was the possibility that you might have had a legitimate claim.  And we ignored your frequent morning tirades about our dog destroying your rose bushes because it was impolite to mention to you that your wife who tends them is a shitty fucking gardener.  But if you are going to accuse  _our_  parents of raising us to be  _disrespectful_ , then I no longer feel we need to afford you any kind of allowances.  You will be hearing from our lawyer, because we’re  _seventeen_ , you pompous piece of racist shit.  What your wife did was illegal and  _frankly_ , we’re tired of you.”  Then he swung the door so it slammed in Mr. Rially’s face.  

There was a moment of silence, while the three of them tried to figure out what to do next.  Tazim reached over to flip the lock on the door just in case the enraged man on the other side tried to get in.  “Are you really calling the lawyers?”

“Its the lawyers or Dad,” Sef said.

Then the banging on the door and the screaming of expletives started.  Tazim sighed.  “Cops or lawyers first?”

“Call the lawyer first.”  He flipped the deadbolt lock too and said, “I’m going to go lock the backdoor.  Where’s Darim?”

“Basement closet,” Tazim answered.  He pulled his phone out of his pocket to call the scary lawyer lady set to the background music of an enraged old man calling his brother things that simply didn’t bear repeating.

–

Altair was luxuriating in the peace and quiet that accompanied a vacation taken without children.  He was sitting in the glorious sun by a sparkling pool, thinking of taking a lovely nap when his phone rang.  He’d taken the precaution of leaving his second phone in the hotel room so as not to have to deal with anything related to work or children.  There were five people that had the number for the phone he’d brought with them.  Two of them were lawyers, one of them was his husband, one was his cousin and one was Jaida.  None of them would have called him unless it was urgent.

He picked it up, “hello?”

“Hello, Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad,” was Ferdinand the second.  She sounded tense, and perhaps terse, and that meant something had happened.  “I am calling to inform you of the unfortunate matter of your neighbor.  It appears that the oldest Mr. Ibn-La’Ahad has had a sexual encounter with Mrs. Rially,” Altair had hoped none of his kids would follow in his footsteps when it came to sex but Darim was doing his best to emulate him.  

“I assume Mr. Rially found out?”

“Unfortunately,” Ferdinand said.  “I have been told that he came to your door to express his frustration and your middle son informed him that he was a racist piece of shit,” which he was, “and this enraged Mr. Rially who began violently beating on the door and shouting several unrepeatable slurs.  I have some of them recorded.  Your youngest son seemed to believe this would require some legal intervention.”

Altair considered it.  “What kind of slurs?”

“I’d rather not repeat them, sir.  I did advise the Mr. Ibn-La’Ahads to call the cops if Mr. Rially did not leave the property.”

“Did he?”

“He did not,” Ferdinand said.  She had a frank manner about her; an utter lack of tone that even Walters (the second) could not match.  Everything was simply matter of fact for Ferdinand.  “How would you like to proceed?”

Altair hummed.  “It would be best for the neighborhood if the Railly’s moved.  However, as my son had sex with the man’s wife, as long as they go quietly I see no reason to do anything further.”

“Of course,” Ferdinand said.  “We will see to it.”

Altair thanked her and hung up the phone.  He considered going to call his sons but that would require him to go back to the room, which would require him to see Malik, which would require him to explain the situation, which would require them to discuss, which would take a while.  He checked the time and then resolved to wait another ten or so minutes.  Just long enough to enjoy the sun a bit more.

–

“Darim,” Tazim said (again), “ _come out_  of the  _closet_.  He’s gone now.”

“He could come back,” Darim said from behind the imagined safety of the closet door.  “I don’t even know how it happened.  I was just there to get some hot chocolate to warm up!  I was just waiting for her to give me the money she promised.  And then we were having sex.”

Sef made ugly confused faces.  He motioned at the door, to indicate the utter lack of sense their brother was making, and Tazim shrugged.  There was no telling if Darim didn’t understand the entire flirtation process or if his brain really was in his dick.  

“Man, it’s okay,” Tazim said through the door.  “Sef had sex with Tyler anyway.”

“I did not,” was a complete and total lie.

Darim yanked the door open to glare at Sef.  “Tyler?” he repeated.  “Tyler?  That kid spent two years nagging Jaida to go on a date.  He stalked her outside the house.  He wrote her sonnets.  He threw rocks at her window.  I had to switch rooms with her because he kept standing in front of his bedroom window naked so she’d see him!  You slept with  _him_?”

Sef had no excuses for his behavior.  “He’s hot.  And he’s not the same age as Dad.”

Tazim didn’t want to linger on that too long.  “We should order pizza.”

“We should talk about Sef fucking Tyler the creep.  I’m going to call Jaida and tell her,” Darim was good about focusing on anything but himself in times of crisis.  He even pulled his phone out of his pocket just in time for it to start ringing over the smug sound of Sef saying:

“I already told her jackass.”

Tazim’s phone started ringing in time with Sef’s phone and just to add an ominous chorus to the mix, there was an ancient landline upstairs that started ringing too.  There was the three of them, all looking at their phones.  Father was calling Tazim, Dad was calling Darim, the hotel number was calling Sef and one assumed Dad’s other phone was calling the house.  

“You have to answer it,” Sef and Tazim said almost simultaneously as Darim looked in horror at the phone screen.

“Why me?” Darim shouted.

“You fucked the old woman,” Tazim said.

“And got caught,” Sef added.

Darim wavered.  Then he touched his thumb to the screen and held it up to his ear gingerly, “hi Dad?”

–

Altair loved his children.  He genuinely loved his kids.  They were everything he’d hoped his children would be, right up to and including the bit where one of them had sex with the neighbor’s wife.  

Malik’s response had been: “but she’s our age,” as if that were the most significant thing.  It was immediately followed with, “don’t.”  He put his hand up to forestall the inevitable part of the conversation where Altair informed him that he’d had sex with women as old as Mrs. Rially (and some older) when he was a young man.  “Married women too?”

“I didn’t ask,” Altair said.  “None of my neighbors though.”

“Do we have to address this?  He’s going to be eighteen in three days.  Technically, all we have is the moral objection to adultery.”  This was uncharacteristic of Malik who had never turned down a lesson that might need to be taught.

“Sef called Mr. Rially a racist piece of shit.”

“Well he is,” Malik said.

Altair smiled.  “I’m sure he’ll be moving soon.  So what would you like to do?”

Malik shrugged.  “What do you want to do?”

–

Darim was ready for any response from his Dad except, “we’ve called Jaida to come and baby-sit you for the a few days until we get home.”

“Dad,” Darim said.  “We don’t need a baby-sitter.”

“ _Son_ ,” Dad replied, “every time you’re left unattended I get a call from the cops or a lawyer.  I don’t mind because you’re my children.  You’re minors.  Its my responsibility to see that you become responsible young men.  So your sister is going to come baby sit you until you’re eighteen.  Then you do whatever you’d like.”

Tazim was snorting.  “I didn’t fuck any of them, Dad,” he shouted.

“Very good son,” Dad said.  “Who did Sef have sex with?  Mr. Rially?”

“ _Tyler,_ ” Darim said.

“Jaida’s stalker?”

Sef scoffed like a growl.  “He’s not bad looking, and at least he’s not forty something.”

“He’s a stalker,” Dad said.  It sounded like Father was adding something that couldn’t quite be understood in the background.  Whatever it was didn’t get repeated but it made Dad laugh.  “Jaida should be there within the hour so please clean the house and hide the illegal substances that you’ve been consuming before she arrives.”

The thing was.  Dad wasn’t joking.  Sef scoffed again, Tazim groaned and Darim looked guiltily around the messy game room.  

“Ok,” Darim said.  “Maybe ask her to drive slowly?”

“Sorry son,” Dad said.  “Children can’t be left unsupervised for long.”  Then he wished them luck and hung up.

Sef and Tazim were both glaring at him.  Darim tried his best to smile.  “You’re cleaning the bathrooms,” Sef said.

“And the dishes,” Tazim added.


	15. Shaun meets Everyone pt 2 (R)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for commissaralexii at tumblr.

Maria had followed them back to the hotel, encouraged by the promises of an alcohol of her choosing and the potential to laugh over the imminent disaster of internet friendships.  Out on the balcony, with her skirt swishing around her legs and a wine bottle in one hand, she was pink with laughter.  “Perhaps you shouldn’t be so intimidating,” was popping in between the bubbles of laughter.  “That poor man looked as if he were waiting for you to murder him.  The only time,” she pointed her finger at him with great seriousness, “that he looked comfortable was when you kissed Malik.”

Altair scoffed.  He had discarded the tie and undone the top buttons of his shirt almost as soon as he’d escaped the formality of the restaurant.  “Do I look so scary?”

“Yes,” Maria said.  “You’re territorial.  Do you think that man was sniffing after your mate?  Your young?”

“My young?” Altair repeated.

“Kadar,” she motioned back inside toward where Malik and his brother were discussing how meeting Shaun had gone.  

“Shaun wasn’t sniffing around anyone,” Altair countered.  “He’s not my friend.  He talks to Malik.  I’m just the vehicle to get them here.”

Maria slid up against his body, her arm went around his lower back as she rested her chin against his chest and whispered, “Shaun is no threat to you.  And it’s not your responsibility to make him like you.”

Altair was not comforted by these assertions.  He just sighed.  “Might be nice not to be perceived as a threat for once,” he answered.

“I didn’t perceive you as a threat,” Maria answered.  “A giant toddler, perhaps.  But not a threat.”  Her smile was perfectly self-aware.  She lifted up to tip-toes to kiss his cheek.  

–

“But  _why_  are you so awkward around strangers?” Kadar asked.  “I’ve seen you be more welcoming to cockroaches than you were to Shaun.  Why?”

“That’s an exaggeration,” Malik said from behind the screen of his laptop.  He was frowning over whatever he was reading on the screen (but he always frowning), when he finally looked up (perhaps sensing that he had to have a better response) he just sighed.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I did want to meet him.  I thought it would be great.  I had all sorts of ideas about what we could talk about or not talk about or do and it just felt forced.”

“He was nervous.”

“Why?”

Kadar narrowed his eyes at him.  Malik had never quite understood the concept of ‘social classes’ possibly because he’d simply sailed through school not trying to make a single friend along the way.  Malik had a singular determination that had probably made it impossible for people to bully him.  In fact, if it had been Malik that Scott Simmons had taken a notion to attacking, the moron would have had to give up for failure to be heard or seen.  “You and your boyfriend are international celebrities?  Altair is rich beyond imagining?  Shaun probably lives in a little apartment in a semi-decent neighborhood and if I remember, he works in a basement?  You’re so far beyond his social class he can’t even see you.”

Malik was just staring at him like he’d spoken a(n unknown) foreign language.

“Altair just looks scary?”

“How do I fix these problems?”  

Kadar could have grabbed his brother by the shoulder just to shake him until sense returned but he resisted the urge.  “I’m going to go check out his homemade game system tomorrow.  I’ll bring snacks.  I’ll try to convince him you’re not marrying Satan.”

“Altair’s not satan,” Malik said almost automatically and then, after, “and I’m not marrying him.”

Kadar snorted, “ _yet_.”  They had clearly reached the part of the conversation where Malik was going to argue against him for the sake of it.  Instead of trying, he said, “so what embarrassing sex thing do you have to do with Altair because you lost the bet?”

“That’s none of your business,” Malik answered.

“Did you get your airplane blowjob?” 

“Yes I did.”  Then Malik devoted his full attention to his laptop.

–

Shaun did not invite Rebecca to his room to lay on his bed and compare notes about the evening but she showed up regardless.  Her hand was threaded through his as she hogged half his pillow and half his bed.  

“She was beautiful,” Rebecca sighed.  As there was no point in agreeing or disagreeing, he did neither.  She twisted around so she was lying half across his chest anyway.  “What’s wrong with you?  I thought you’d have more to say.”

“Oh?” Funny that.  “I told you I didn’t want to meet them.  I don’t know what to say.  I don’t know how to behave.  I don’t know what to do with the suit.”  He’d hung it up as nicely as he could just in case Altair wanted to repossess it.  

“How was it dancing with him?” she asked.  “It looked like floating on a cloud.”

It had been a bit like floating on a cloud.  It had been surreal in the extreme.  Shaun shrugged.  “It was–”  But he could not dismiss it as nothing.  Rather than try to unravel that, he said, “Kadar is coming tomorrow to play on your megasystem.  He’s offered to provide any snacks or drinks we might want.  I assume you have requests.”

“Hell yes I do,” Rebecca said.  “Do you have his number?  I’ll need to start texting him the list now.”

–

“Beyond his social class,” popped right out of Malik’s mouth (erupting one assumed, from the dormant part of his brain).  It didn’t matter that he was straddling Altair’s lap (or that up to that moment, they had been very near to fucking) because these things had the tendency to occur to Malik whenever they pleased.  “I’m not beyond his social class.”

It was a touching situation because it was before breakfast, not long after waking up, and Altair wanted orgasms more than he wanted a fight.  He was willing to ignore how his attempts to arouse Malik were successful but apparently not noteworthy.  In fact, Altair rolled them over so Malik was under him.  

He liked being on his back for these sorts of conversations anyway.  “Why would Kadar be part of his social class if I’m not?”  Malik didn’t seem to care one way or another that Altair was going to continue on with the fucking plan.  “That’s ludicrous, if we were of such different social classes, why would he talk to me at all?  And you’re–”  Malik’s tirade was briefly interrupted so he could pay attention to the fact that he was getting fucked.  “Pillow,” he said as he groped around the bed to find one to put under his hips.  “So you’re just going to do this?” 

Altair smiled at him.  “I don’t have anything to contribute.  I’m not part of his social class.”  He kissed Malik’s offended frown.  “Neither are you.”

“Social class is instantly transferable?”

“It would be if you’d let me fuck you without a condom,” Altair said against his neck.  He didn’t see Malik roll his eyes but he felt it with his whole body.  

“Just fuck me and stop talking,” Malik said.  He pulled Altair by the hair so he could kiss him and that was far better than trying to worry over things like why Shaun didn’t appear to be comfortable around them.

–

Kadar considered attempting to find and purchase everything on the long list he’d been given and decided it was much simpler to text Rebecca (who had texted him her list) and ask her to meet him where they sold all the things. 

“Shaun is preparing himself,” she said when they were in the aisles.  “It takes him a while to prepare.”

“I understand,” Kadar agreed, “this one time I did a make-up challenge and it took me hours.  I have nothing but respect for people who do it everyday.”  It was a stupid joke (his specialty) and for a moment he was sure that it had fallen flat.

Rebecca looked at him over her shoulder with her lips almost in a smile.  “You’re intentionally misunderstanding me?”

“Yes,” Kadar agreed.  

That made her chuckle and she shook her head.  “Shaun doesn’t make friends easily.  It’s tragic because once you get six layers down, past all the bullshit, he’s a great guy.”

“My brother’s a jerk straight to the core.”  Because it was true.  “I mean, he means well but he’s an asshole.”

Rebecca threaded her arm through his, “I think we can be friends.  Shaun will come around; your brother can join up if he feels like it.  Not sure about Altair, he seems…”

“Yeah,” Kadar agreed.  “He’s a good guy.  A lot better than he gets credit for.”

–

Shaun had mentally prepared himself for Kadar’s visit.  He’d coached himself through several different small catastrophes and decided against lighting candles to mask the smell of his failure to make something of himself.  While he rehearsed various lines about how his flat really was a very nice one, very affordable, very snug and he didn’t need much since he had no aspirations in life and no chances at a romantic encounter, he had not thought up one single thing to say to the sheer overwhelming reality of having the small bear occupying his living room.

Kadar appeared to have grown since they last saw each other.  “That’s amazing,” he said with no pretense, “what does it play?”

Rebecca snorted, “you meant, what  _doesn’t_  it play.  You name it, my console can handle it.”  They dropped their bags (and bags, and bags) of groceries on the couch in favor of looking through the shelves full of games they could conceivably play.  “Shaun!” Rebecca shouted, “did you ever want to know obscure game trivia?  Because he knows it.”

“I love obscure trivia.  It’s useful to shut my brother up.”  He was  _honestly_  delighted to be sorting through games; he argued with Rebecca about whether to play a multiplayer or a single player.  The longer he stood there, larger than reality, the less and less it seemed to matter that he’d come across an ocean (and across the internet) because it made  _perfect_  sense that he was here now.

“Rebecca is particularly fond of Mario Kart,” Shaun suggested.

“Me too,” Kadar said.  “I get Princess Peach.”

“Do you know Princess Peach has a sister?” Shaun asked.

Rebecca groaned.

“I didn’t,” Kadar said.  He accepted the remote when Rebecca handed it to him and after looking back and forth around him, sat on the floor with his back against the couch.  “I jump around,” he said by way of explanation, “I’ve got long arms, it’s very dangerous for your noses.”

Shaun took the controller that Rebecca gave him and ignored the smug smirk she offered him.

–

Altair honestly did not care about any of the landmarks or romantic spots in England.  He’d seen them all at one point in his life or another.  (And the romantic ones were filled up with memories of momentary entanglements anyway.)  He didn’t care about them, but he did care about Malik grinding his teeth over social classes.  “I told you that this would happen.  I told you that once you were with me, everyone would see you differently.  You’ve put up with the invasive questions, the speculation, the tabloids–my family.  Does this really matter so much?” he asked rather than keep up the pretense of sight-seeing. 

“None of that seems real,” Malik said.  “I’ve never met the people that write the trash about me.  I don’t read it.  I try not to notice it when its nearby.  I got to college, I live with you in a house–not a castle,” he motioned at the whole of England as if it were one large castle, “so it doesn’t seem  _real_.”

“Until it does?”

Malik shrugged.  “This isn’t a matter of me questioning our relationship.  I love you.  I’m here, I’m staying.”  Then again he cracked a smile out of nowhere, “I’m just used to people disliking me because of me, not because of a preconceived notion of social class.  This isn’t even personal.  We make him uncomfortable and it’s not  _us._ ” 

“We can try again.  Or not.  He seemed to like Kadar.”  

“Everyone likes Kadar.”

It was almost physically impossible not to like Kadar.  Even when you tried.  Altair pushed his hands down into his pockets.  “So, are you enjoying this?”

“No,” Malik said.  (As much as Altair was loathed to agree with Leonardo about anything, Malik simply did not have any beauty in his soul.  His utter inability to appreciate the wonder of this world was almost infuriating.)  “Kadar probably won’t be back until late.”

“Probably not.”

“I still owe you my half of the bet.”

“I’ll call for a car,” Altair said.  Malik’s smile was absolutely wicked and it was the most perfect thing in the whole damn world.  Altair kissed him while the phone rang, thinking about all those dirty promises he was going to deliver on.


	16. Altair gets colored on (G)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: so many moons ago I tried to figure out what sort of tattoo Altair would get for his kids and I lingered on the notion that he’d just write their names on the opposite side of the flower.  But if he did that it probably would have been fairly large for Jaida because he was SO EXCITED and then he’d have to come up with something for the boys.  There were 100 other ideas but I ended up thinking something like this.
> 
> written for anon on Tumblr

“Dad,” Darim grunted around the marker top in his mouth.  His chubby fingers were already covered in marker, his mouth had streaks on either side of purple and blue and green, mixing together on his teeth.  “I can’t open it,” sounded like he was saying.

Altair took the marker so he could pull the marker top and almost missed Tazim grabbing the permanent marker off the tray.  “Hey,” he said and grabbed it out of his son’s disappointed hands, “not those ones.  Use yours.”  He pulled the lid off the neon pink marker and handed it back to Darim who happily stood up so he could continue his masterpiece.  Altair couldn’t see it because it was on his back but it felt like a giant wet mass of something.  

Jaida said, “move,” to her brother (probably Sef) and there was a brief scuffled behind his back that landed an elbow into his spine.  

Tazim was sitting next to the tray of permanent markers, arms crossed over his chest, probably plotting his next attempt to steal one.  In fact, the whole thing had started with Altair sitting in the sun room (alone) with his markers and his paper and no particular notion of what he meant to draw.  Sef had wandered in first, leaning against his back to ask him what he was doing.  That had drawn Darim who loved nothing with as much delight as he loved coloring over all of Altair’s tattoos.

Now his budding artists were adding their own birds (and flowers, and trees, and usually some sort of vehicle) to his back.  Tazim had signed his name on Altair’s lower arm.  

Before he could be stabbed with a bony elbow again he reached back and dragged Sef forward.  “Don’t fight with your sister.”

While the other kids would swap colors, Sef only used the teal marker.  (Heaven forbid someone else took it.)  “She took my spot!” he said.

“Look,” he held up his arm, “you can color here.”  

This was a subpar location to draw.  There were birds on Altair’s back.  There was a compass on his right arm.  His upper left arm had nothing but a bunch of fancy letters his three year old sons couldn’t read.  He barely saw Tazim reaching for his markers again in time to reach out and slap the flat of his hand over the top of them.  The motion made Darim’s marker slip and he gasped in outrage.  Jaida shrieked because it must have messed her up too.  

“I need an eraser!” she screamed.

“Its  _marker_ ,” Darim countered.

“Malik!” Altair shouted.  He didn’t move his hands off the permanent markers.  Tazim was trying to slide one out from under his hand while Sef wriggled in his lap to get at the inside of his elbow where the crown was.  While the black bar was a useless tattoo to his kids, they liked the crown.  (That’s  _Mom’s_ crown, they said.  And if they thought that meant Maria was a princess he never told them otherwise.)  

Malik walked into the room still wearing his pajamas, having the distinct look of having just been enjoying his coffee and not worrying about where all his preschool children had gone.  He paused just inside the sunroom with a smile.  “Yes?” he asked.

“Tazim,” Altair said over Sef’s body laying across his legs.  “Stop trying to take the markers.”

That made their youngest son growl and cross his arms with extra force.  “Why not.” did not sound like a question.  “I want to make a real tattoo.”

“You dummy,” Jaida said from over Altair’s shoulder.  “That’s not how you get a tattoo.”

“You don’t know!” Tazim shouted.

Darim leaned forward against his shoulder to (shout) into Altair’s ear, “how do you get a tattoo Dad?  Can I get a tattoo?”

“Hold still!” Sef hissed.  (To be honest, holding still wouldn’t make Sef’s attempt at art look any better.)  

“Help,” Altair whispered at his husband.  Malik was smiling at them with aghast adoration.  He wasn’t a fan of markers, or messes when they were happening to him but he always seemed to love watching them turn Altair into their coloring book.

“They stab you with needles,” Jaida was saying with a great deal of authority.  “Peyton told me.”

“No,” Darim whispered back.  “Did they stab you with needles Dad?”

Tazim’s growling was getting ever so slightly louder.  

Malik was shaking his head in the doorway.  He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the cat tree closest to the door.  Right about the time Tazim’s growling was going to escalate into screaming, Malik wrapped an arm around him and pulled him off the ground so he could sit in his spot.  “You can’t use your Dad’s markers, Tazim.  They’re for his art.  If you would like to, you can draw on me.”

Tazim was sitting in Malik’s lap, tipping his head back to smile up at his Father.  He arched his back and kissed the bottom of Malik’s chin before he rolled out of Malik’s lap and grabbed his own marker box off the floor.  He was delirous with joy right before Darim tried to come join him.  “No!” Tazim shouted at him.  “You’re over there.”

Sef stopped his attempt at drawing something human-like to assess the situation.  “You have to share,” he said.  He shoved himself up to his feet, clutching his sole teal marker.  “Dad’s already colored up.”

This was a good point.  Tazim was searching through his whole brain to find a come back to that.  He arrived at, “Father’s hairy!”  Malik was not, in fact, nearly hairy enough for that to matter much.  “And bumpy.”  But only where the scars were.  “And Dad has more arms,” was his finishing statement.

“Tazim,” Malik said softly.  “Maybe we could share?”

Jaida who had left the room without anyone noticing, returned with a whole pack of baby wipes.  She handed him the tub and pulled out at least five of them.  “You messed me up,” she informed him.  Then she took her balled-up bunch of wipes to start scrubbing his back.  

Darim wavered because coloring was fun but trying to wash Altair’s tattoo’s off was slightly more fun.  He was caught up in confusion while Sef, the opportunist, said, “can I color with you, Tazim?  You can use my markers.”  He even held out his box of markers.  It was an easy offer to make because Sef had never even opened most of them.

“Sure,” Tazim said, “you can share with me.”  

Malik made funny faces with their son’s coloring on his back.  He kept trying to turn his head to look at them and the two of them kept pushing his head back.  Sef’s fingers went across the scar on his scalp and he said, “what’s this?” until all four of them were pulling Malik’s hair to investigate.  “It’s a scar,” sounded very, very patient considering there were four kids pulling his hair.

“Why?” Tazim asked.

Darim gave up halfway through Malik’s explanation of how he’d been in a car accident.  He came back to finish coloring in the compass on Altair’s shoulder.  “Can I get a tattoo, Dad?” he asked again.

“When you’re older.”

“Can Jaida?”  Didn’t seem like it followed the first thought.

Jaida let go of Malik’s hair to glare at her brother for saying her name.  “I have a tattoo,” she said (very loudly) and then she marched back over to yank Altair’s arm up and stab her finger against the pretty pink footprint on his ribs and her name written inside of it.  She was smug-as-ever, grinning at her brother.

“That doesn’t count,” Darim shouted back.  The whole thing was going to devolve into another argument about why the three boys didn’t have one (because caring for three infants had been slightly more important than getting tattooed) when Malik interrupted them to say:

“You should put the marker on your feet and we could make you one.”  He was so proud of himself.  So there was Altair, lying on pillows, getting kicked in the ribs by his sons, under Malik’s supervision.  “I’ll write your names,” Malik said when the boys happened to discover that their footprints didn’t include their names.  He took the black permanent marker to do it (and Tazim was furious).  

“I think they’ll notice when it washes off in the shower,” Altair said.

Malik shrugged.  “I guess you’ll just have to go see your tattoo artist before they remember.”  He kissed Altair.  “Come on, boys.  We need to clean up, everyone find your markers.”  

Altair didn’t participate in Malik’s insane need to have everything put away orderly (because it aggravated even him) but snap pictures of his son’s footprints on his side.  It didn’t fit with Jaida’s tiny newborn footprint, but it was time (far past time) to add the boys’.  

“Hey,” Darim said when his markers were all put away.  He fell on Altair’s chest (because he had no concept of personal space or his own weight), “did they really stab you with needles?”

“Sort of,” Altair agreed.

Darim was horrified but impressed.  “I don’t like needles.”  Nobody needed to be reminded of that.  He pushed himself up because Malik was saying words like “snack” and “then we’ll go play” and nothing motivated the children better than the prospect of food.


	17. Kadar briefly loses the kids (G)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> written for anon on tumblr

Kadar had said the phrase: ‘you raised good kids, they won’t be any trouble,’ no less than fifteen times in a single conversation just to convince his brother to take a god damn day off.  It wasn’t a lie because all four of Malik’s kids were well-behaved little demons.  If one of them wasn’t, they had a way of policing themselves that required very little effort on the part of the adult watching them to resolve.  (As long as Jaida was present, without her the triplets were likely to devolve into a mob of in-fighting.)

Altair was over-seas on business that was taking him (thus far) a week and a half longer than projected.  (And Kadar assumed that meant someone had pissed Altair off and he was systematically dismantling the entire senior staff because of it.  Or he might just have gotten caught in boring meetings, it was very difficult to tell.)  Malik had a cold and colds made him miserable.  Altair had called Kadar to retrieve the kids and take them somewhere for the day so Malik could sleep.

So here he was, one adult in a mall food court at an empty table.  The table shouldn’t have been empty.  There should have been an eight year old girl sitting on one side, glaring at her brothers.  There should have been three almost seven year olds glaring back at her.  Kadar had literally walked six feet to retrieve a plastic fork and come back and in the less-than-a-minute it took him to go that far, all four children had disappeared.

Their food was still present.  Their toys were scattered on the floor.  Three chairs were even pushed up to the table.  

“Fuck,” Kadar whispered.  His hands were still held out to either side of his body because he’d been half-way to saying that he thought they should maybe find an indoor playground sort of thing after this.  Maybe laser tag or a bounce house.  Something to keep the demons moving so they’d fall asleep early.  

He looked left (and no children) and he looked right (and no kids).  He dropped the fork on the table, tried to think through the sudden panic, and pulled his phone out of his pocket.  Claudia answered him on the first ring.

“Yes?” she said.

“I lost them,” he said.  “They’re gone.”

Claudia had sounded somewhat preoccupied when she answered the phone but there was a noticeable shift in her tone that meant she’d turned her face into the phone to ignore whoever was speaking to her.  “No,” she said.  “You cannot lose Altair’s children, Kadar.”

“Well, which ones are Malik's?,” he asked.  He took two helpless steps to one side and stopped because the only thing in that direction of the food court was sushi and he didn’t think the kids even liked sushi.  There was ice-cream on the other end and also a store full of shiny jewelry things that both Sef and Jaida had spent a solid ten minutes trying to talk him into.  So there was a better chance they’d gone that way.  (God knows, Jaida could make her brothers do anything.)  “They’re not here,” felt like it needed repeating.

“Why did you leave them?” sounded so exasperated.  

“They were eating!  Aren’t kids supposed to just sit and eat when you provide them with food.”

He didn’t need to see Claudia to know she was covering her face with her whole hand.  “Not all children are you,” she said.

“Uncle Kadar,” was a voice from just behind him that accompanied a sharp pull at his jacket.  There was Tazim looking up at him with such disapproval.  “We hide,” he said (as if it were so obvious), “you find us?”

As if summoned by some kind of magic, Jaida appeared from around the opposite end of the food court with her fist wrapped up in Darim’s hair as he shrieked his outrage at being yanked.  One or two adults were staring in outrage and the spectacle had drawn the hesitant-but-amused attention of a security guard.

“It’s fine,” Kadar shouted down the aisle.  He grabbed Tazim’s wrist just so he didn’t evaporate into thin air again.  “They’re with me,” he shouted as he tried to side-step a couple that were too busy looking horrified to get out of the way.  “Jaida,” he called (with as much fairness as he could manage), “let go of your brother’s hair.”

Jaida made a deliberate show of loosening her hand from Darim’s hair and then reaching down to wrap her whole fist into his shirt before she started yanking him forward again.  She didn’t let him go until they were back at the table.  “ _Stay_ ,” she said to him.  Then she glared at Tazim who shifted so he was half behind Kadar’s body (and who wouldn’t want to hide when being looked at like that).  

“Sir,” the security guard said.

“We’re fine,” Kadar assured him, “we’re going.”

Jaida stomped over to a trashcan, one of the big round ones that people threw their paper trash and half-drank sodas into.  She reached up to wrap her fingers around the inside lip of it (and Kadar saw his whole life flash before his eyes as he imagined what Altair would do when he found about this) before she yanked it as hard as she could.  The lid popped off after a bit of complaint.  

“Jaida!” Kadar shouted.  He dropped the phone and Darim dove down like he was going to pick it up but Kadar grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him a bit sideways so he could get both boy’s hands with just one.  That gave him a free arm to reach out to get Jaida.

Only, there was Sef, popping up out of the trash with ketchup and soy sauce and marinara and  _God_  knows  _what_  all over his clothes.  “ _Jaida_ ,” Sef said with his hands on his hips.  “We said  _Kadar_  was it.”

This was it.  This was his cause of death.  This was the end of his life.  Tazim popped up at his right hand (funny because he should have been holding Kadar’s left hand) with the phone pressed to his ear.  “ _No_  Aunt Claudia we weren’t trying to get anyone in trouble.  We  _were_ behaving.”

Kadar said, “Jaida, hold Darim,” and he could have predicted that she’d grab him by the shirt front.  He picked Sef up out of the trash while an aghast looking custodian clutched her white rag against her chest looking like she wanted to offer help and she didn’t want to get involved.  The whole food court was nothing but whispers of inadequate parenting while the security guard was saying:

“Sir, are you sure everything is okay?”

“Yes,” Kadar said.  “Usually my wife’s with me.  I just expected the kids would behave a bit better.  We’re very sorry.”  He set Sef down (with a grimace) and took the phone from Tazim long enough to say, “I’ll call you in a bit, everything’s fine.”  Then he grabbed Tazim’s hand.  “Jaida come on.”

They didn’t stop walking, and the boys didn’t stop complaining about lost food and toys, until they were out in the parking lot, protesting how they were being physically lifted into the car.  

“That’s not fair!” Sef was shouting from his booster seat in the back-back seat.  “Because it’s not just a Hot Wheel!  It was a limited edition roadster and its very hard to find one of those.”

“Your Dad’s a billionaire,” Kadar said as he lifted Darim into the car.  He’d finished putting the boys.  Jaida stood outside the car with her hands on her hips, head cocked to the side and foot all but tapping on the ground.  “What?” he asked.

“Let’s start with thank you,” Jaida said.  “I found them all.”

“Tazim came back on his own,” Kadar countered.

“No he didn’t,” Jaida said.  “He heard Darim crying.”

“She pulled my hair out!” Darim shouted from inside.

“I came back on my own!” Tazim shouted.

“Thank you?” Kadar offered.  It was not even a little bit what Jaida was angling to get out of this situation but he was willing to offer that to see what else she might want.  

Her smile did not make him feel better.  “You’re welcome, Uncle Kadar.  Don’t worry, they did the same thing to Father.”  Then she climbed up into the vehicle on her own.  Once she was buckled into place, she pulled her sunglasses out of her purse and slipped them on her face.  “I want ice cream,” she said.  “Maybe Father doesn’t hear about this.”

Kadar leaned against vehicle with one hand on the handle of the sliding door.  “You can’t keep them quiet,” he said.

“No,” she agreed, “I can’t.  But I can tell them I  _helped_  you find them.”

“Hey!” Sef shouted, “you weren’t  _it_.”

Jaida cocked her eyebrows up behind her sunglasses.

“Fine,” Kadar said.  “Ice cream, then we have to find somewhere that sells kids clothes.”

–

He called Claudia back while he was scrubbing Sef with a handful of paper towels in a family bathroom at Target.  There was a bag of new clothes that looked suitably similar to what he’d already been wearing.  The other three were standing with their backs against a wall.  “Crisis averted,” he said when Claudia picked up.

“Was Sef really in a trashcan?” Claudia asked.

“I’m cleaning him up,” Kadar countered.  “He’s fine.”

Claudia hummed.  “Where are you going next?  I’ll meet you.”

The truth was, Kadar didn’t want to take the demons anywhere but straight home to their bedrooms.  Except that the two boys not being vigorously scrubbed with paper towels were looking at their shoes.  Jaida was looking fed up with the world.  “I was thinking the bounce house,” he said.  

“Fine, I’ll be there.  Do not let them out of the car until I get there.”

That settled, Kadar finished cleaning up his nephew as best he could before dumping his dirty clothes into the trashcan.

–

While sitting in the parking lot, Jaida and Sef climbed into the front seat next to him while Darim pressed his face against the back window and blew fart noises into the glass.  Tazim sat on the center console and asked him what every individual knob and button on the car did.

Claudia appeared next to the driver’s side window, shaking her head at him (but smiling).  He rolled the window down far enough to hear her say, “this is reasons one through fifty why we decided not to have children,” wasn’t accusing but amused.  “Let them out.”

Once all the kids were out of the car, Claudia assessed them (and saw they were unharmed with her own eyes).  She crouched in front of them, reached out to take Tazim’s hand on one end and Jaida’s on the other.  “If you act out here, I’m calling your Father.  Do you understand me?”

The thing about Claudia was that she could make anything sound like a nuclear apocalypse.  The worst Malik would do was be disappointed in his kids but all four of them (even haughty Jaida) nodded solemnly.  So Claudia smiled at them.  “Good, lets go.  Everyone hold an adult’s hand.”

–

Kadar took the kids to a pizza bar before he returned them home.  Malik still looked like shit, but well-rested shit, when his kids came to hug him in the kitchen.  Thanks to Claudia’s parting instructions (I better get a call saying you took a shower and went to bed) all of the kids left their Father immediately to go and prepare for bed.  

“Is Sef wearing a different shirt?” Malik asked.

“No,” Kadar said.  “Don’t think so.”

Malik didn’t believe him for a minute.  Maybe he just didn’t think it was worth debating.  Rather than protest he said, “thanks for taking them.  Altair’s on his way home.  And Lucy’s coming tomorrow.”

“No problem,” Kadar said.  “You know I love the kids.”

Tazim chose that exact moment to bounce down the stairs wearing nothing but his underwear to proclaim, “Sef climbed in a trash can today!”  He was  _delighted_  to share that.

“Well I’ve got to go,” Kadar said before Malik could start with the questions.  


	18. Malik and Altair look at art (G)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize for Malik's deplorable lack of art appreciation.

There were benches, Malik assumed, for the people that could sit and stare at the art on the walls.  He kept looking over his shoulder at them, waiting to see anyone sit and look at their phone, waiting to find anyone else milling around the gallery that might share his inclination to simply  _not understand_  what he was supposed to be feeling.  No matter how many times he looked over his shoulder, he hadn’t found a single person looking as bored as he felt.

He’d lost Altair seventeen paintings ago; left him standing perfectly still, looking over the same bit of art for a small eternity.  Malik had tried to stand there, tried to appreciate it for it’s (beauty?  He made the assumption that the art was meant to evoke a sensation of experiencing beauty) and found that no matter how he tipped his head or tried to align his thinking all he saw was a great deal of paint on a canvas.

“You’re going too fast,” Altair said.  He didn’t pull on Malik’s hand because they’d had one or six or sixty arguments about how much it annoyed Malik.  Instead he waited until Malik walked after him.  When they reached the painting (only two removed from the one Altair had gotten stuck at), Altair moved to stand behind him and slid his arms around Malik’s chest.  His arms were loose but heavy, holding him in place.

“I do not believe I’m sophisticated enough for this,” Malik said.

Altair scoffed at that.  “Do you know why my Grandmother liked art so much?” 

There was no polite way to say, ‘I assume it was because she was rich beyond imagining and collecting art was a rich person’s pastime’.  “No,” Malik said instead.  

“She said that art was honest.  It does not have to be beautiful to be worthy, it does not have to make you feel good to  _be_  good.  She didn’t like to believe in God but she thought art was the only proof that man was capable of possessing a soul.”  Altair’s chin rested against his shoulder.  “When she looked at art, she saw  _people._ ” 

“If I look at it and feel nothing, does that mean I have no soul?” Malik asked.

Altair was quiet a beat before he said, “for you,” was very fair sounding, “I think it means you’re looking at something that defies your sense of rationality.  You don’t see the art, you see the components.  This is oil paint.  This is a canvass.  That is a wood frame.  This was sold for thousands of dollars and all the supplies to make it can be bought at a craft store for fifty dollars.”

“The frame probably cost more than fifty,” Malik amended.

Altair bit his ear, just a nip, just enough to express his frustration.  “This comforts me,” he said.  “Art makes me feel.” 

Malik ran his hand down Altair’s arm across his chest and curled his fingers around his.  The painting was still colors and brush strokes.  It made a picture.  He looked at it, trying to cultivate some feeling about it, and the best he managed was the vague longing to move on.  “I like being here with you,” he said.  “Why don’t you tell me what you see?”

A few months ago, they would have fallen into an argument but they were  _trying_  (harder than ever) to find compromises and to put faith into each other.  Now Altair said, “ok.”  


	19. Mama Maria in Exile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one of the (many) things that I consistently went back and forth with in Sass was whether or not to let Mama Maria redeem herself with her children/Altair. as the story went on, it became obvious that even if she wanted to, Altair would never have accepted any apology and there could never be any reconciliation between them. Behind the scenes, the idea of how Mama Maria came to be the boogeyman she was always existed. So, I figure why not share this.

Just once (if only _once_ ) it would have been nice to find out that Phyllis had gotten something wrong. But every single word she’d ever spoken was a prophecy. It started in the old house, when Maria was new to English and Phyllis still had something pink and vulnerable in her face. She was fat on food, and warm blankets, and an imagined safety. Maria was perfectly clean and wearing clothes that fit her, she asked Phyllis why she couldn’t stay.

Phyllis had said, “your Mother would not let you go. Maybe, she doesn’t want you. Maybe, she doesn’t care for you. But she’ll demand you come back every time.” But Maria knew, like Phyllis knew that Mother didn’t want Maria out of love or loneliness, but to see what she could get out of her. 

When Maria was older (so many, terrible, years older) and back from a long winter in Italy, back with fresh bruises on her body and fresh dark places in her soul, she was screaming at Phyllis-the-blank-faced statue in the safety of the big office. Maria screamed until her throat was raw, about homelessness, and hunger, and her Mother that had offered Maria to a man for a (un)fair price.

Oh, old Phyllis had only said, “that is unfortunate,” like she was even capable of understanding the filthy feeling of Maria’s skin. As if she understood what it was like to be hungry, to be cold, to be _afraid_. Phyllis sat behind the desk when she looked at Maria and she tipped her chin up (like she did when she spoke to insolent men who begged her for favors) and she said, “you don’t have the constitution for hatred, Maria. You’ve got the spine but you don’t have the stomach. It’s important to have both,” Phyllis said. And she would know, she was filling up with hatred from the bottom to top. It was pouring into her like liquid fire, hollowing out her face to leave nothing but her skeleton pushing through her skin. “You’ll just end up hating yourself in the end. There’s no victory in that.”

\--

It was the god damned flowers that Maria hated most. There was a pure, almost understated cruelty, to the flowers. They were tucked perfectly into their flower beds, they were well-cared for by men who did little but hand her the work order and assure her they would be done as quickly as possible. 

Once, she’d torn them out of the soil and left them on the stone in her backyard. It had taken a whole afternoon of effort; her hands were raw and filthy from ripping them out by the stems. The backyard was a battered, ugly mess of torn-up dirt and stringy roots. She had been sobbing with effort, with her knees bent and tears running down her face. But there was victory in her defiance. 

Oh, yes. Maria had taken the beauty and the _constant_ mockery of those flowers and she’d destroyed them. 

But the men with work gloves and work orders had simply planted new ones by the end of the week. A half-grown man in a perfectly tailored suit had shown up at her door, looking apologetic as he introduced himself,

“My name,” he said (as if he needed to bother), “is Frances Walters and I represent—”

“I don’t want the flowers,” Maria said before the boy could embarrass himself by explaining his position at the law firm or his relation to the monster that Phyllis had kept at her left elbow. Maria was old now (so very old now) but she remembered that snot-nosed boy and his deep-red nose rag that he pulled out of his cavernous pockets every five minutes. His raw-and-wounded voice as he explained very plainly, very insistently, how things were going to be. What Walters lacked in intimidation he made up for in persistence. 

“You see,” Mr. Walters said with an understanding smile, “the flowers are a condition of the contract.” 

Maria might have disputed it, if she were still young enough to benefit from it. Instead she smiled and the boy smiled back at her. “I understand,” she said. Then she sent him on his way. When she was alone (again, _still_ ), she was alone in the yard, looking at the flowers. 

Oh yes, Altair was his Grandmother’s living wrath. The flowers were no compromise, no attempt at sweetness, no attempt to make her isolation more bearable. They were the ever-present reminder of who owned her. (Because Altair, unlike her, he had the spine and the stomach for cruelty.)

\--

It was in the morning, late in summer, when her exile was interrupted. In her fantastical imagining, she had thought Ezio might come to see her when he decided to marry. She liked to imagine that Claudia would bring her husband back; that the boy would smile at her with such perfect understanding while he poked at her with sticks. The thought did not please her but it was _something_ and Maria was starved of everything. Every day had gone gray, had fallen into monotone; it persisted.

Maria could not have predicted it would be Federico that found his way to her home. (But Phyllis had, on her deathbed. She had looked at Maria with unbridled contempt when she said, ‘you hate that boy the way you hate yourself; I wish I could be there to see him realize it.’) All the same, there he was: dressed like he’d only just escaped a beach visit. There was nothing about him—not his clothes, not his face, not the indecisive curl of his fingers around his car keys—that suggested he had intended to be here; or that he had been sent.

“Mother,” he said on one side of the threshold.

“Son,” she said on the other.

Federico could not even make himself believe he was asking, “could I come in?” 

Maria was not sure why she nodded without protest or how they came to be sitting on opposite sides of her perfectly tiny dining table. She had fetched wine glasses and wine, and there they were:

Federico laying his phone face down on the table top, letting his fingers linger across the back of it while he stared at the wine in his glass.

Maria sitting opposite her son for the first time in years, having no distractions, and no audience. He was different away from the noise of his brother and sister; far from concerned glances and grand statements of support and solidarity. She had become accustom to seeing his placid, unflinching face behind Ezio’s regretful condemnations. She had memorized his sour-frowning face as it aged from infancy to adulthood; but time had weathered her memories. This man that sat in front of her was just as sullen, he was just as sour. 

“I am certain that you have heard Claudia is now married. I had the honor to walk her down the aisle and give her away.” He looked up at last. 

“Yes,” Maria said. “I had heard.” In fact, the cruel little boy had sent her an entire album of photographs that she could cry over. She had spread her fingertips across the glossy-photo of her only daughter’s smiling face as she looked at her husband with such adoration; but it did not feel like Claudia’s smooth, warm skin; it had been cool and tacky and inhuman. 

Federico seemed not to know how to proceed.

“Will that boy keep her happy?”

“Yes,” offered absolutely no room for doubt. Federico’s fingers moved to grip the stem of the wine glass. He turned it in a circle, again and again, and when he had spent enough time keeping himself from speaking, he said, “you must have reasons.”

“Must I?” Maria asked.

Federico was not amused by her deflection. He shifted in his seat so he wasn’t nearly so lazy and disinterested. His forearms were pressed against the table as his body slanted forward toward her. “This is not a matter of power, Mother. This is not a struggle; there is no battle for the upper hand. Neither you, nor I, have any say in what happens to you anymore. We have nothing to gain from pettiness.”

“I did not raise you to give away the upper hand, Federico.” Which was true enough, if not necessarily the appropriate answer.

“In this case,” he answered without moving an inch, “you forfeited the win. You wagered your power against Phyllis’ and you lost.”

Maria hissed a breath through her teeth and took a sip of her wine. It was white and very dry. She said, “it seemed like a safe bet, considering she was dead at the time.”

Federico relaxed by fractions. “You must have reasons.”

Oh yes. Maria was nothing but reasons. She took another sip and it was crispy as firecrackers across her tongue. “Just one,” she said. It was the only important one, the only one that mattered at all, “I hated my Mother.”

Oh and how her son laughed, like he had been punched in the gut. His hand flailed, it knocked over the wine glass. The liquid spilled in time with his sharp-report of laughter. The pink of his face was honest shock, and bitter, ugly joy at hearing such a thing. She leaned to pluck a towel off a cart she kept near to the table and threw it across the puddle on her table. Federico’s eyes were watery when he hiccupped to a pause. “Me too,” he said.

She lifted her glass and then took a sip.

\--

Maria was nineteen and three-fourths the way through seducing Giovanni into loving her. He was almost thirty and taking-his-time to marriage, being careful not to litter his bastards throughout Italy. There was nothing Maria could offer him (by taking her clothes off) that he hadn’t already had the opportunity to enjoy. So, she made herself available for conversation and she kept him at arm’s distance. When his palms were hot and hungry, trying to find a way under her clothes, she had pushed him away. She’d filled his head with ideals of marriage.

Perhaps it was nothing but a misplaced bit of vanity, but Maria liked to think she’d made a man out of the boy Giovanni had been when she found him. He was a brilliant boy, fit to take over his father’s empire, but he was so easily taken by fits of passion and rage. She’d picked him out of a dozen candidates because his family was _ancient_ and she thought she could stand looking at his face every day. She thought she could stomach his naked body rubbing against hers—obscene and sticky. 

It only mattered that she’d secured his attention; that she’d plied a bit of respect out of his brittle old Mother. His father could be swayed with money and Phyllis had managed the business transaction. 

He proposed to her over a lavish dinner and she cried when she agreed to be his wife.

Phyllis didn’t say, _go and tell your Mother_ , but she’d pushed a slip of paper across a hotel table at Maria. Written on it was an address, and one of Phyllis’ drivers had taken her to aging home that smelled of aging women and slow-death. Maria had been stopped by a nun in the lobby, and taken along a hallway to where her Mother was lying in bed with restraints tied at her wrists. Her flesh was waxy, poured sloppily over her bones. 

Still, she looked at Maria with some recognition, and she smiled. “My baby,” her Mother said.

Maria had only lifted her hand, shown her the ring she’d gotten from the boy she’d seduced. And she hissed, “I’ll never beg for pennies again,” just like she’d been rehearsing since she found herself suddenly transported to Phyllis’ magnificent mansion.

Mother’s face was working toward shocked, but any expression took very long for her face to make, for her mind to process. Too many years of starvation and homelessness, of relentless assault and misuse had left her a living corpse. Mother had been used up by life, and Maria hated _nothing_ so brilliantly as she hated her Mother’s delayed-shock. “You’re married?” Mother gasped.

Maria was a banshee in the quiet room, screaming until her throat was full of blood, as loud and as constant as she could manage. It roused the whole of the house; it brought the nuns and a worried doctor. A Priest was at the door, clutching at his crucifix as they all looked. It was the first (but not the last) time she had an audience of witnesses; and Maria gathered up all the blood and spittle in her mouth and spit on her Mother’s waxy-uncertain face. 

There was no victory in her Mother’s defeat; the dying woman in the bed was not the whore that begged for nameless men to fuck her around an alleyway. She wasn’t the shivering beast trading cocksucking for dirty beds. She wasn’t the woman that put Maria on corners without shoes, holding a sign she couldn’t read. She wasn’t the one that had rifled through trash, that had taught her how to sleep in doorways. She wasn’t the woman who had begged Maria to let men fuck her so they could have a room to sleep in.

No.

The woman on the bed, reacting in half-time to the spit on her face, was nobody. 

\--

Federico drank water from a tall glass; listening without interruption to the torrid history of her Mother. “Did you ever love Father?” he asked. 

Maria had considered the answer to that very question so many times it seemed there was no answer to it anymore. Like a wound with the scab plucked away too many times, it had never fully resolved. “Not in the manner Giovanni loved me,” was as much as she’d ever managed to work out. “I believe that I got swept up in the fantasy from time to time. I allowed myself to play the part so completely that I believed I must have loved him.”

Federico nodded along to that; he took another drink and resettled in his chair. “Did he know?” was asked to the rim of his glass, and not to her.

“Not at first,” she said. “I think he was simply content to know that regardless of my own feelings, he possessed me. It was a compromise that he could live with. I managed his house, I provided him with children.”

“Have you ever loved anyone?”

“I loved my children,” she said. “Love,” seemed a needless correction.

“Not me,” Federico said. Then, before she could dispute it, he waved his hand in the air and wiped it away. “Why didn’t you help Edward? He was only a child; Phyllis put him out.”

“Why didn’t you?” she asked. “I don’t imagine you would have managed enough interest or effort to care what became of Edward if you hadn’t let him slip his cock in you.” The words were _sharp_ and _poisoned_ , and as soon as she’d spoken them, she wished she had not. Federico’s jaw twitched and his hand slid off the table. He sat straight in his seat. Maria sighed, palms out in surrender. She opened her mouth to speak but she was cut off:

“Is that how you imagine it happened? When you picked me up from the police station, covered in wounds, with the marks of the belt he tied me down with—that’s what you imagined happened?”

There was no proper defense for the tears that stung her eyes, “what could I have done? Anything I did to Edward; your father would have asked why.”

Federico’s tongue was lapping across his crooked lips, he looked sideways for a moment and then back at her. “I was cruel to Edward because I could be. I was only allowed to hurt Ezio a little. Desmond was no fun; he never fought back.” He paused again, unhappily regarding his water glass. “Edward never forced me,” seemed meant for someone besides her. “And we were both children when I hurt him. You don’t have the luxury of such an excuse.”

“When you shattered Vieri’s wrist, did you consider him a person?”

“That was business,” Federico said. And business was simply an entirely different matter; one did not have to enjoy business. They simply needed to do it.

“It gave me control during a time of my life I had none,” she said.

“He was a _child_ ,” Federico said. 

“Yes,” Maria agreed. “He was a miserable child. Calvin never cared for him—none of them did. I deserve my share of the blame, but do not imagine there was ever a member of that household that lifted one finger to save Edward from his fate. Not even Old Finch.”

Federico’s whole face was rage; and that was a look she’d never seen before. Not like _this_. She’d seen his face when he was angry over someone hurting his brother, when he was angry at her for something she’d done. She’d seen him furious at life itself, but she’d never seen him like this. No _this_ was the sort of anger that a man could only when he loved someone completely. Never in his whole life had Federico ever loved someone in such a manner. He’d coasted along on pretenses and appearances without putting in the time or effort. “I am presently unconcerned with their sins. He was a _child_.”

“I hated you,” cut straight through all pretenses, straight to the point. “I hated you being inside of me. I hated how you got there. I hated Giovanni for putting you there. I hated Phyllis for knowing you existed long before I told her. I was _disgusting_ and disgusted and there was _nothing_ that I could do about it but smile at my husband and happily submit to his every desire.”

There were tears on Federico’s face, brimming over his eyelashes while she spoke. It was no surprise to him because he had known since he was born that she couldn’t love him. He was the price of her admission to the family and that was all he’d ever been. An inconvenience; an obligation. Giovanni had loved him. Oh, how Giovanni had loved his first born son (more than any of the others that followed him). 

“You have your peculiar desires but you have never and will never be a woman, Federico. It was my own doing and I know that. Edward did not deserve what I said and did to him. Neither did you.”

“Did you believe Desmond?” Federico asked.

\--

Old Finch was dying (slow and steady) and withered from an endless life of servitude. She was laid out on the same bed she’d slept on since birth (more or less), looking at Maria with no kindness. 

“You’re going to hell, little girl. You know it as sure as you know anything,” Finch said. 

Maria was so terribly tired, long past her prime (with a lifetime left to go), and there were no ears to hear them anyway. She leaned against the seat back and regarded Finch. She’d been a constant in the kitchen, picking up bits of Italian in the summer when Maria visited. When it mattered, she was there with warm food and comforting hugs. But she was a strange bird, with half-blind eyes that turned her back on anything untoward Phyllis did. It was Finch that had told her not to marry Giovanni, and it was Finch that had always saved a plate for Edward in case he was hungry.

But it was Finch that let Maria take Desmond straight back to her house of wolves, and it was Finch that let Phyllis put Edward out like a dog.

“I’ll be in good company,” she said.

Finch regarded her sternly, like a Mother might have. “It’s not too late to make it right, little girl.”

“It’s far past too late. I made my choices; I’ll simply have to live with them.” She cleared her throat and looked around the room, at all the old albums that were stacked near the bed, at the humidifier, at the stacks of tissues piling up like mountains. “What do you think Altair will do?”

“To you?” Finch asked with a bitter laugh. “I don’t have the imagination or the stomach to guess.”

Maria only sighed.

\--

“Yes,” Maria said. “I did believe Desmond. I needed Altair, the money caring for him provided was significant. He wouldn’t have gone without Desmond. I needed Giovanni to vent his anger—he’d lost a son, he knew I never loved him by then, he was on the verge of guessing what you’d been up to in the doghouse. You would have told him, just to prove you could.”

Federico’s shrug did not confirm or deny the obvious.

“There is simply nothing you can hate about me that I do not already hate about myself,” Maria said. “I actively abused Edward. I could barely contain my distaste of you, I hardly managed to convince your Father I loved you. Phyllis never believed it. I suspected William long before Desmond finally managed to say anything. I used your Father for my own gain and I gave him nothing in return. When my son died, I could not pretend and it fractured our family in a way that no amount of my effort could mend.”

“Why did you cry when Father died?” Federico asked.

“Because I was free,” Maria said. 

“Why did you come after Edward?”

“Because I knew he’d go to you.”

Federico licked his lips and he let out a breath. “Altair will never forgive you. Not ever. Christina will never allow our children near you. You won’t get to see Ezio get married. Do you understand this?”

Maria smiled and Federico did not smile back. “I think, for some things, there can be no justice. So, there must be vengeance. I could never make my Mother understand how desperately I hated her; but Altair has made himself clear.” She didn’t cry (but she wanted to) when she said, “please attend my funeral. Tell my grandchildren I loved them very much. Tell them something good about me, just one thing.”

“You could tell them,” Federico said.

“No,” Maria said. “I’ve wasted all my chances.”

Federico considered that and then nodded. He picked up his phone and then rubbed his hands against his lap as he got to his feet. He was awkward, half intent on leaving and half-lingering at her side. “I wish you would have taken the money,” he said. “I wish you could have been happy.”

She looked up at him, at his perfectly honest face. “Take care of your children, Federico. Do better than we did.” She did not try to hug him, or touch his hand (though she wanted to do either, or both, or everything).


	20. Altmal, laundry mat, college years

“How are you doing?” Malik asked him when he surfaced from the book he’d buried his head in as soon as the dirty clothes were stuffed into the washer of dubious quality. It wasn’t Altair’s first time in a laundry mat because he’d gone with Desmond once (or twice) in his whole life. It was just that absent something else to concentrate on, he couldn’t think of anything except for how the cracks in the tile floor seemed to be growing some kind of vegetable garden. 

(That was only a minor exaggeration.) 

“Great,” Altair answered. He wasn’t great, exactly but he wasn’t about to admit otherwise. “We could have found a nicer place.”

“I’ve been coming to this place since I started college,” Malik retorted. It was his definitive rebuttal to any suggestion that required him to do something outside of his incredibly small sphere of comfort. “I’m not sure where other laundry mats are,” he conceded, “hopefully the laundry room will be finished before we have to come again.”

Altair leaned in against his shoulder because the alternative was being closer to the wall that had a grimy sort of shadow from all the bodies that had already leaned on it. The old washers were doing their best, chugging and churning the water and clothes. “How’s the reading?”

“Long winded,” Malik answered. He dropped the book back into his bag and stretched. “Have you thought about actually enrolling in all of those classes you keep sitting in on?” 

This, too, was a constant sort of conversation they had. It existed fluidly between every single interaction they had about anything. Aside from the ‘you know you don’t have to stay here if you’re bored’, it was the single most constant argument starter. Malik didn’t mean it like ‘you can leave now’ but it still seemed like he was subtly leaving a door open in case he needed to kick Altair through it. “I don’t want to answer that because you’ll get mad at me and you promised we could have sex when we finished.” 

“We could have angry sex,” Malik offered.

Altair turned enough to give him a good, solid disbelieving stare. When he was sure he’d conveyed his meaning, he said, “I’m thinking about enrolling somewhere. I’ve got someone arguing with a few universities about their policy on how many classes I can take at once.”

Malik’s forehead wrinkled up like it did every time he was reminded that Altair was a Bona Fide Genius (in a way that didn’t turn him on). The man took such _personal_ offense to the idea that Altair didn’t need to read and reread and highlight and discuss to understand something. It was best not to bring it up too often this close to an exam. “Those policies exist for a reason,” Malik said. “Even if you are intelligent enough to manage them, taking too many courses at the same time can be extremely stressful.”

There was probably a way to explain to Malik that school was one of those things that simply didn’t stress Altair out very much. (But trying to figure out how to live side-by-side Malik did stress him out. There was, altogether, far too many things to learn and remember when it came to romantic relationships. The entire process of making space in his singular life for another person continued to be more stressful than anticipated.) “My plan is ask for more than I want so that I can argue them to two less than the number I do want so I can make sure I really can handle it before returning victorious and asking for the original number again.”

“How many classes do you want to take at once?” Malik asked.

“I don’t want to tell you,” Altair said. He couldn’t control the shit-eating-grin spreading across his face much the same way Malik couldn’t control joining in to say:

“Because you’ll get angry and you promised we’d have sex when we were finished.” Malik sighed. “Ok,” was reminding himself they’d agreed to stop pushing each other into arguments. He floundered looking for something that wasn’t going to start one. (This close to exams, the wind blowing could make Malik break out in debates.) “What kind of sex?”

“As many as I can get,” Altair said.

Malik frowned.

“Do you want to make a list?” He’d anticipated being laughed at. He did not anticipate Malik digging into his bag and producing a sheet of paper and a pencil. “We’re really going to make a list?”

“I really like having sex with you,” Malik said. “The longer we talk about it, the less I’ll be thinking how unfair it is that you’re rich, handsome, super intelligent and,” he motioned at Altair’s crotch. “So, yes. Let’s make a list. You won’t notice the dirt, I won’t get angry because I have to reread this shit,” he kicked his bag, “again.”

“Ok,” Altair said. He took the paper and the book Malik gave him to write on. “How specific a list because I can probably fit all the things I want under general headlines or we could break this down minute by minute.”

Malik’s smile was devious. “I like kissing you,” he said.

“Right,” Altair agreed. “Kissing,” and he wrote it down. “Like, positions? Types? Kinks?”

Malik’s smile just got slightly more devious. 

“Skirts?” Altair asked.

“Sure,” Malik said, and it was things like that, how pleased he was about it, that made it hard to remember that Malik had ever suffered a second of shame of sex. “I’m also willing to let you blow me.” He said it in Arabic with a sideways glance at an older woman with a pushcart full of trash bags (hopefully with clothes in it).

“I do like that,” Altair said. And since they were being all discreet about their sex lives while talking about it in public, he scribbled it down in French. That made Malik roll his eyes but that didn’t stop him from coming up with fun new additions to the list.


End file.
